


Walking After Midnight

by nerdrumple



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Eventual Smut, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-13 15:58:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2156523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdrumple/pseuds/nerdrumple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Insomnia drives Belle to taking walks after midnight... where she bumps into the very person who's been keeping her awake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wild Nights

She set her book down on the nightstand beside her, jostling the tall stack of previously read books as she did so. Her eyes felt wide and dry, rimmed with the hours of sleep she’d just missed. She anticipated more sleepless hours to come. She thought reading would help. It helped with everything else that caused her stress, anyway. But she’d heard somewhere that reading in bed actually prevented one from getting a good night’s sleep . . . an article she’d probably read in bed, while struggling for sleep. She chuckled to herself dryly.

She stretched and tossed off her covers. The room was bathed in soft yellow from her lamp and she knew that simply turning it off to invite darkness wouldn’t help. It didn’t help last night, or the night before that, or the night before that. Lately, the only thing that had been helping was a good walk.

Her boots were already waiting for her at the front door. She could practically hear them calling to her as she made her way down the staircase, lazily ducking her head into an oversized sweater and pulling her arms through. After tucking her feet into the boots and donning a coat, she went out to greet the night.

The air was chill and the breath she took in felt sharp and satisfying. It drifted before her in a glistening cloud. Her eyes still hurt, and the memories of just what was keeping her up these several nights kept prickling at the back of her mind. She tried to avoid the thoughts, instead focusing on the story of the book she’d just been reading and on the dark night ahead of her. The silver of the moon was a beautiful contrast to the yellow of her bed table lamp, anyway.

 _Names,_ she thought to herself, listening to the soft padding of her boots on the pavement. _There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names_ , her book had said, and she couldn’t shake it. She almost wished she hadn’t read it. Because he never used her name, he only called her _Miss French_ , and it was equally infuriating and provocative. He said it when he was being kind, he said it when his tone was clipped, he said it in warm greeting, he said it with indifference. _Miss French. Miss French. Miss French._

The Rabbit Hole was one way, her library and his shop the other. The forest was ahead. She didn’t want the low hum of red light offered by the bar, and the darkness that blanketed the forest felt unnerving. So she followed the path she’d taken the previous night’s walks before, down to her territory, and down to his. The street lights overhead pooled their welcome in greeting to the familiar midnight tenant.

 _Miss French,_ his voice echoed in her head, and the memories she’d been avoiding came flooding back.

It had been a month since she’d accidentally walked in on the two of them bickering over partially fulfilled rent payments, he and her father. He’d appeared to be in his element, hunched darkly over his cane with Belle’s father awkwardly leaning forward while sitting on an overturned bucket, hands rhythmically wiping the sweat from his palms up and down his thighs. Bits of stems and crushed petals lined the floor around him, evidence of the barely afloat flower shop.

Her father had never been a particularly strong man; she’d grown up having to carry all the strength between the two of them, ever since Mom died when she was just a girl. She’d have to do it now, too. Face their landlord and his prodding for what he very well knew her father couldn’t produce. She had taken a breath and stepped forward to make her presence known in their conversation.

But his demeanor had changed upon seeing her, back to the lighter air he carried when approaching her for her own rent. Perhaps because she was always on time and always with the full amount, his stop with Belle was often a jovial one, allowing for a fair amount of small talk before he departed to put back on his dealer’s mask and terrorize the town’s other residents. But seeing that face with her father was hitting too close to home.

Ready with strong words and to stomp her foot if necessary, either possibility was cut short as he breezed an exit past Belle with a smile and something about having a lovely afternoon. The smile was false and the words were jagged, but nevertheless softer than what her father had just endured. A week after the incident Belle had scrounged enough money to slip quietly into an envelope that, after some light refusal on his part, her father finally accepted as help to keep the flower shop alive a little longer.

She’d always heard that the pawn shop owner was a monster. That was name the town had given him, though her friend Ruby had a choice more vulgar words she often chose to fling his way when he wasn’t actually in view. Belle had never thought of him like that, though. She’d given him other names. _Mystery_. _Layered_. And somewhere, surely, underneath those crisp suits and menacing stares, _Good._ But here she was, finally on the receiving end of just what it was everyone hated him for, however indirectly.

She didn’t blame him, she blamed her father. But that didn’t mean seeing the faltering in her father’s expression and the desperation in his voice didn’t sway her soft heart.

 _Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power._ She couldn’t pry her memories and her book apart anymore. Power meant everything to him, that was clear. He’d almost looked happy at her father cowering before him, and that look on his face was what had been keeping her up these nights. Of course the suddenly tight bills weren’t helping, what with the aid she now offered her father.  But that face . . . would he ever look that way at her, that dark crooked smile, those hands gripping his cane, fingers flexing, if she ever missed a payment? Would he offer her that gleeful look of anticipation at her failure? It was making her sick.

She’d been avoiding his name in her head during this walk, and each nightly walk before that. But here she was now, in front of his shop, the name scrawled along the top.

“Mr. Gold,” she whispered, unsure what tone to give to the name.

A light was on, despite the late hour. The soft yellow was the same of her bedroom lamp when her sleeplessness was getting the better of her. It seemed she wasn’t the only insomniac in town. His soft light had been on every night she came wandering over his way, and she sometimes saw his shadow working beneath it.

“Mr. Gold,” she whispered again, deciding ferocity was the appropriate tone.

“Mr. Gold,” this time with an exasperated sigh.

“Miss French,” came a voice behind her, and she jumped violently, biting her tongue so as not to gasp aloud. The sharp taste of copper bristled in her mouth.

He was behind her, wearing his usual crisp suit accompanied by a heavy wool coat and scarf and she was briefly distracted by the handsomeness of it all. She was also briefly embarrassed by the appearance of her bedclothes and had to remind herself it was perfectly acceptable to be wearing such in the middle of the night, even if her location was strange. She couldn’t even picture him in bedclothes, she realized.

The look on his face was not the one that’d been keeping her up at night, but one of deep interest, and they stared at each other for a long moment before either spoke. His eyes swept over the skintight fabric on her legs and she persuaded herself it was not so different than the tights she wore during the day, so she shouldn’t allow embarrassment to stain her cheeks. She was grateful for the baggy sweater and pea coat that hopefully hid her braless state.

“Mr. Gold,” she said, trying to hide the budding red in her mouth, “you startled me.”

“Apologies, dearie,” he said, that unwavering gaze on her, “but you startled me. I have regular business hours, you know.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Well, this isn’t the ideal hour for satisfying your sudden itch for antiquing.”

She shook her head a little. She liked to think she was one to keep up with his quips, and hated that her hazy sleepless state had slowed her down.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said with a sheepish smile. “Sometimes a walk . . . however late the hour . . . helps to clear my head.”

“Helps you to forget,” he said in a low voice.

“Yes,” she said, though try as she could,  no forgetting was getting done. “Your shop wasn’t my destination, I’m sorry, it was just . . . along the way.”

“I see. And what was your destination?”

She hesitated, then laughed something quiet and throaty. “Inner peace,” she said, the sarcasm light on her breath.

He tilted his head. “The map to that destination has yet to be drawn.”

She did not respond to him, but instead watched as he flexed his fingers over his cane, in a way she was familiar with, in a way that somehow eased the situation.

“You’re quite underdressed,” he said, running a hand down his own coat. “You’ll catch your death out here.”

He was right. Despite her coat and sweater, when she wasn’t moving she was shivering, and her layers were nothing compared to the many he wore clearly keeping him snug.

“Yeah, well,” she started, fumbling, “because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me,” she said, then immediately felt sheepish and quite stupid. Had she just recited poetry at him?

He raised his eyebrows. “Of course the town librarian would be wandering alone at night and quoting Emily Dickinson.”

She laughed softly. Thank god he hadn’t rolled his eyes at her. “I’m sorry, like I said, you startled me.”

“Startled you into poetry recitation. Can’t quite say I’ve received that reaction before.”

She laughed again, looser this time, and he finally smiled at her. It was a smile she was used to, the one he gave her when they chatted at the library.

“Let’s get you out of this cold, dearie,” he said, stepping in closer, but moving on past her towards his shop like he intended her to follow. To her surprise, she did.

 _Dearie._ He called her that often. He called everyone that. It was the condescending name he gave everyone, and she didn’t like it, but she didn’t want to walk away. Here she was, out in the night, sleepless and stressing over this very man, and here he was, awake in his own dreamless state, wandering the black streets. It all seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.

The door to his shop opened with the gentle chime of bells, and he held it for her in an unspoken invitation. Her hands were buried in her coat pockets and they clenched into hidden fists. She eyed him warily, not really able to see his face against the shop light glowing behind him. She entered anyway.

Once inside, Belle blinked a few times as her eyes adjusted to the light, dim as it was. When she looked Mr. Gold in the face again, she saw that his eyes also looked wide and dry, red-rimmed and sleep deprived. But he didn’t look hazy the way she felt; he looked jittery. She wondered what was keeping him up each night.

“Are you all right?” she asked before she could stop herself.

He paused, having walked ahead of her, and turned back to face her, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

He came up behind her, offering to take her coat. She obliged, until she suddenly remembered her bare breasts and clearly visible nipples underneath her oversized sweater.  Unable to protest in time without bringing direct attention to the matter, she quickly folded her arms over her chest as he hung her coat on the rack, then joined it with his own.

“You don’t even look tired,” she noted.

“Been drinking coffee all night. It’s time for tea. Would you care for some?” he asked, his voice quiet as he turned around again. They both let their previous questions go unanswered.

 “. . . yes, I would, thank you,” she said.

He stepped around his counter and disappeared behind a curtain. She tried to busy herself in his absence by looking over his shop, leaning back against the glass case and facing out. Her exhaustion was catching up to her, now that she was enveloped in the warmth of his shop rather than the crisp night air. Her body wanted to lie down, but her eyes protested when she tried to close them, their dry rims burning. It was for the better; if he found her snuggled against the floor of his shop who knew what he’d say.

She had only been in his shop once or twice, and was charmed to remember how cozy it looked. Warm hues of red and brown layered themselves about the shop, and the place had a spicy musk to it, with each item on display free of dust or fingerprints. She expected no less from the meticulous Mr. Gold.

He returned several minutes later with a tray surrounded by equally pristine tea things. Proper tea, she noticed, loose leaf and smelling wonderful. When he handed her her cup, he did so in the same manner she employed when handing him a library book – slightly brushing his fingers as she withdrew her hand. The gesture wasn’t lost on her, and she looked up to see his eyes meeting hers in a way she couldn’t quite read.

They drank in silence, and the more he watched her, the more self conscious she felt. So she countered his look, staring right back at him.

“It’s strange seeing you at night,” she started softly. “Like I get to see another part of you. A secret. Though you’re just as immaculate at night as you are during the day,” she said, gesturing to his suit.

He smiled. “Just haven’t had time to go home yet. You though,” he gestured back, “this is quite a different look for you. I’m the one who’s indulging in a secret.”

“Oh, this was just thrown together for my walk, I normally don’t wear anything to bed,” she said, only fully realizing what she’d just said moments later. She silently cursed herself, cheeks staining.

“Fascinating,” he said, biting his cheeks to keep back a wicked grin.

She buried her face in her hands. Her eyes stung and her head ached with a dull, raw feeling. The embarrassment wasn’t helping. “I’m sorry. I haven’t slept proper in ages. And being here with you, it’s a little unnerving.”

“Really? You’re the last person I ever thought I’d unnerve.”

“Usually that’s the case,” she muttered, “but we’re out of our elements, aren’t we? I’m not surrounded by my books, and you’re not surrounded by your mountains of gold.”

“I’m not Scrooge McDuck, you know.”

She giggled.

“Besides,” he said, “this _is_ my element. My pawn shop. This is where the naïve come to strike a deal with me.”

She bit her lip. The conversation was heading directly where she didn’t want it to, her conflict and confusion rising with each step they took closer to acknowledging how he’d treated her father.

He noticed the shift in her mood. “Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?” he said, and his face was so warm that she knew she couldn’t. The feelings rising in her and keeping her awake at night were a combination of longing for him, anger with him, anger with her father . . . and god, the way he was looking at her was only making it worse.

She ignored his question. “What’s keeping _you_ up? Why haven’t you gone home yet?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but hesitated. “There’s a lot around here I need to finish before I can go home.”

“Perhaps you should hire a shop assistant.”

“Are you offering your services?”

She smiled at the way half of his mouth crooked up while saying that. “But then who would supply the community of Storybrooke with knowledge only the pages of books can supply?”

“Wikipedia, I imagine.”

She mock scoffed at him. “Well, between that and eBay, you and I are likely to be irrelevant soon then, aren’t we?”

He laughed gently, and she found the sound perfect, a realization both wonderful and uncomfortable.

“At least unknot that tie,” she said, surprised at her own boldness. He gave her a funny smile, but reached up to his neck to oblige. He unlaced the thing from about his neck, and let it rest on the counter, undoing a button or two until a small triangle of flesh was exposed. “Better?”

“Better,” she said quietly. “Now I don’t feel so frumpy.”

“There are many words I’d use to describe the way you look tonight, but frumpy isn’t one of them,” he said. He was nuzzling the fabric of his discarded tie between his index and middle finger, his hand dangerously close to the blanketing fabric of her sweater pooled near. With a transition she didn’t quite catch in its process, he wasn’t fingering his tie anymore, but the edge of her sweater near her wrist. The move was smooth and natural, because it was one she’d allowed before.

They’d both done it to each other, treating their clothes like introductory skin. In the library he’d note how fond he was of a particular color she was wearing, and would reach up to brush the fabric between his fingers, gently, with an expression trying to read itself as offhand. And she would return it in kind with a touch to his pocket square or his tie, occasionally the fabric at his elbow or collar. They hadn’t played this game since she’d encountered him with her father, though. The reminder cast a shadow over his face.

She pressed the question again. “Are you all right?”

He hesitated before responding. “An old pain, nothing new,” he said with a dismissive hand. “Some scars simply don’t heal.”

It would have been easy to guess what was wrong. He was a man who struck many deals, and drew a hard line with each one. Being the town terror probably offered many sleepless nights, if one was wrestling with their conscience.

“Let’s strike a deal,” she said, causing him to raise a single brow. “I’ll stop asking what’s bothering you if you stop asking what’s bothering me.”

He sniggered slightly, then nodded.

His first answer rolled around in her head, though. When he’d mentioned _scars_ she was aware he wasn’t referring to his leg, but she now caught him absently rubbing at his knee, a gesture that immediately reminded her of her father, back when he rubbed his legs in absent desperation as Gold pounded down on him. The memory soured her mood, and she told herself she should tip her scales of opinion of Mr. Gold towards _anger_ rather than whatever crush this was she had on him. So she made a plan to hastily finish her tea and make her exit, but through the haziness of her thoughts she realized he had spoken.

“My name,” he’d said.

“I’m sorry, what?” she blurted, embarrassed to have been caught lost in her mind again.

“You said my name, earlier,” he said, cupping his tea in his long fingers and not looking at her, “when I bumped into you out there.”

She felt her face turn red, and as she reached forward for her tea cup to drain the last sip, she accidentally knocked it to the floor.

She quickly stammered an apology and knelt down to retrieve the cup, where he joined her in an attempt to get the cup himself. He hesitated when they were on all fours grasping together for the cup and looking at one other, and she realized her sweater was gaping wide open at the neck, giving him a full view of her chest. He said nothing, and she quickly rose.

“Your name,” she said, her red deeper than ever. “I had just been, er, just reading your front sign, aloud,” she said. “You know me, I, eh, like reading.” She couldn’t have felt more stupid if she had broken his teacup . . . which she apparently had.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured once he’d risen to join her, wincing from the pain in his leg. “It’s chipped, I’m so sorry. You, you can hardly see it.”

He sighed and engulfed her hand and the cup with his own hands, steadying her. “It’s just a cup,” he said.

Between a bitten tongue, a chipped cup, and flashing her chest at Mr. Gold, Belle was thoroughly ready to crawl back into her covers and die.

“I should be going . . .” she said.

He didn’t try to stop her, not right away. “May I walk you home, Miss French?”

“Belle,” she said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.

“Pardon?” he said.

Her mind was so rough and drained from her insomnia. She offered up a silent prayer for the ability to reclaim at least some of her wits for her next sentence. His triangle of exposed skin, tan and lovely, wasn’t helping.

“My name is Belle. You’ve caught me wandering in the dead of night, you’ve shared your tea with me, and you’ve likely seen . . .” she started, looking down at her shirt, then shook her head before she said something stupid again, “please, you never use my name, just . . . you can call me Belle.”

He nodded, circling her chipped cup in his hands and keeping his eyes trained on hers, not allowing them to dip down to where she’d just been looking. “Belle,” he said in a firm whisper. “Goodnight, Belle.”

_But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name._

“Goodnight . . .” she said.

She’d wanted to return the _goodnight_ with his name, but he hadn’t offered it to her as she’d hoped. So she left his shop, offer ignored, bell tinkling, and made her way back to her home. To her soft yellow lamp, and her book whose pages wouldn’t rid themselves of her mind. She realized then that neither she, nor anyone she knew, knew Mr. Gold’s first name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by my own bouts of insomnia that I fill up with all of your wonderful fluff & smut. I haven’t written fics since I was a teenager so please be kind. The book mentioned is Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson


	2. It Goes Everywhere

He watched her go, hand tight on his cane, other hand tight on the chipped cup. “Belle,” he whispered. Names had power, after all.

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her out there, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. He had spied her figure outside his window before, wandering in the night, a slow pace, making him wonder if she was sleepwalking. He had managed to bump into her that night, had almost hoped he would, when he needed to head out to his home workshop for a particular tool. And sure enough, on his way back, there she was, a lovely shadow against the moonlight. A vision of curves and curls, and he was even more startled when she _said his name._

He’d always liked Belle French. It was easy to get his breath caught in his throat when he was around her. He’d made it a habit of collecting rent for her apartment at the library where she worked, which simply wasn’t protocol. It was standard to avoid a tenant’s place of business for payment collection unless he was collecting on the business itself, but he intentionally went to visit Miss French at the library for a handful of reasons, reasons that were all short and flowy and showed off her exceptionally long legs, especially when she was up high on a step ladder.

Mr. Gold was not the type to ogle. If he was, there were plenty of beautiful women in this town he could graze his eyes over. Miss Lucas had equally lovely legs, Miss Swan had golden locks and shapely arms, and Miss Blanchard had creamy skin when it wasn’t buttoned up all the way to the hollow of her throat. They were beautiful, but he noticed their attractiveness the way he noticed David’s and Killian’s attractiveness: just another fact to be noted. None had truly caught his eye but Miss French; _Belle_ , as she insisted. He felt drawn to her.

It was probably because those lovely features were accompanied by the things that normally piqued his interest: intelligence, a similar sense of humor, wit, courage. The kind smiles and clever book recommendations didn’t hurt, either. She didn’t speak with him the way others did, she didn’t cower.

But he’d messed all that up.

He’d been witnessed threatening her father with eviction. He liked to think that Belle saw the good in him that no one else had, but that was probably because she’d never actually seen the beast before. Now, she had. And things weren’t quite the same. The stress of it all, not to mention last month’s phone call, had him losing sleep. Hours of sleep, hours that started out as late night book reading that turned into late night kitchen rummaging into late night antique tinkering into simply never going home from the pawn shop. The exhaustion was not only terrorizing him, but the tenants of his town. Because when Mr. Gold was unhappy, everyone was unhappy. His bad mood spilled into every deal, and the late nights were only getting worse.

And then came the night he saw Belle unhappy too. Funny little insomniac Belle, so different from cheery morning librarian Belle, yet just as enticing. Walking at midnight, alone and cloaked in nothing but a coat and flimsy sweater that did little to hide her from him. Just what was keeping her up night after night? He wasn’t blind, he knew the timing coincided with his own. The argument with her father was keeping them both up, this he understood. But he wasn’t so foolish as to think her reasons were his own; he was riddled with guilt over upsetting _her_ and over ruining whatever flirtations they shared. She was merely stressed for her father’s sake. He was certain any imagined affection he thought she had for him was now surely wiped out.

And yet she’d come into his shop that night.

And the night after that, and the night after that.

She allowed him to brew tea for her, to join him at his counter and eventually his back room where a set of plush chairs allowed for more comfortable sitting. He’d had the opportunity to sell them recently, but intentionally denied the sale in order to keep them available for his midnight visitor.

Their discussions were light, tiptoeing around what had happened with Maurice French. Until last night. When she’d left, adjusting her coat over a set of now perfectly brassiered breasts, she’d said,

“He’ll have it all for you, tomorrow. I lent him some. He’ll . . . he’ll have all that he owes you. Including what was missing last month.”

“Belle,” he’d said, because she perked up when he called her that, and he loved calling her that, “you gave him _your_ money? You didn’t have to do that, this is a private matter between me and your father-“

“And you’ll sort that private matter out with him tomorrow just fine, I imagine. Because he’ll have what he owes you. And it doesn’t matter that his daughter gave it to him, because that’s a private matter between father and daughter, the landlord be damned. Good night, Mr. Gold. Thank you for the tea.”

So that was why he was dreading his visit with Belle this morning.

He stepped up to the circulation desk of the library, but she wasn’t seated there. Instead he found her between shelves of books, on one of those damned step ladders, wearing one of those damned circle skirts. Despite everything, when she saw him behind her, there was a smile on her face.

“Good morning Mr. Gold,” she said, stepping down from the ladder. Her voice attempted to sound bright, but it was off a few beats. He wondered if he was the only one aware of her sleep troubles. “Everything went well with my father today? Just like I said it would?”

“Miss French,” he started, and her smile disappeared. He wasn’t yet ready for the town of Storybrooke to hear him referring to her by her first name, but by the look on her face he knew his tone had given away more than his refusal to use her preferred name in public.

“You didn’t take it,” she guessed prematurely. “You . . . _you_ . . . why? Why? It was enough to cover his debt!”

“Miss French . . .”

“Are you trying to teach me a lesson? Is it the principle of the thing, that I gave him the money, when you don’t think I should have?”

“Miss French-“

“What does it matter where the money comes from so long as you _get your money?_ ”

“Belle!” he hissed, and she finally stopped in her rage to look him in the eyes. She waited for an answer, and in his hesitation he tentatively reached out to place a hand on her shoulder, which she stiffened at at first. “He said he didn’t have the money.”

This wasn’t what she was expecting. “He . . . what?”

“He said he didn’t have the money,” he repeated.

She searched his eyes and he could briefly see her self doubt, her thoughts racing before she formed an answer. He could see the insomnia in her, the exhaustion that riddled her face as much as it surely did his own. And if the strong smell of coffee circulating the library was any indication, it was the only thing keeping her on her feet this morning. He was sufficing on a similar diet, though he clearly wasn’t as apt at hiding his irritation with Storybrooke as she was. Though he was sure he’d just broken down her resolve.

Instead of speaking, she grabbed his hand, the one resting on her shoulder, and for a moment he thought she’d throw it off and accuse him of lying. Instead, she darted towards the circulation desk, dragging him in tow, her hand tightly gripping his.

“Belle,” he started, after she pulled him through a small door behind the desk.

“I have a back room too, you know,” she interrupted. The room was small and obviously meant for organizing book returns. The receiving end of a library drop box near a small bin of books indicated as much.

“My seating arrangement isn’t nearly as comfortable, though,” she said, pointing to a single metal folding chair.

“I’ll stand,” Gold said, flexing his fingers over his cane.

She stood too, taking a brief glance out the door into the library before deciding they were sufficiently alone. She turned to face him, folding her arms and fixating her gaze on the floor briefly before actually looking at him.

“What do you mean ‘he didn’t have the money?’”

“He said he didn’t have it, and that he was ready for eviction.”

“ _What?_ ”

He was sure she didn’t actually want him to repeat himself again, so he simply waited.

“But I . . . I _gave_ him the money!” she said, a hand gesturing uselessly in the air.

“I know you did, Belle,” he said softly.

“What is he . . . how could he . . . what else did he say?”

“A few words about what an arse I am.”

He expected her to laugh at that, but got nothing.

“He said he was ‘ready’ for eviction? So . . . are you going to evict him?”

“. . . yes.”

“Gold!”

“Belle!”

Her hands were starting to wring her own elbows, and she was shaking her head, eyes wide and brows furrowed. She plopped herself down into the small metal chair, and heaved a dark sigh.

Before he lost his resolve, Gold knelt down in front of her, his injured leg settling into an awkward angle and his cane resting against the wall. He took her hands in his, and the intimate gesture caused Belle to stiffen again.

“Your father’s been lying to you, Belle,” he said slowly.

She eyed him harshly, then let her face relax. “I know,” she said, her voice small, the fight from her gone. She welcomed his attention, his camaraderie, he realized. Somehow, this had become something they were in together.

“Was this about more than rent? Did he owe you for something else?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

She shook her head again. “He wouldn’t take the money at first. Maybe he never meant to keep it. Maybe he plans on returning it . . .”

“Let’s hope so.”

“But I don’t _want_ it back,” she sniffed. “I wanted to help him.”

“Maybe he’s as stubborn as you are,” he said.

She gave in to offering him a small smile despite herself. “He’s never lied to me like this before. We’re not _close_ , but, god . . . maybe he’s not _lying_ , per se, maybe just keeping things from me.”

“Is there a difference?” he asked.

She paused. “Perhaps not. Ready for eviction, he said? _Ready?_ ”

“Like it required a ticket.”

“Damn him,” she said softly. “And damn you, too.”

He allowed her that. Yes, damn him. For this, and so many other things.

He licked his lips now, lost in thought, lost in the memory of what had transpired not hours ago with her father. Gold often relied on his perception of body language and tone more than what was actually being said to him, and the stilted conversation he had had with her father was no different.

“Belle,” he said, rubbing small circles into her wrist, “I’m not one often accused of having a wide range of human emotion, or sympathy for those who carry the plight. But I know sorrow when I see it. Talk with your father.”

“Of course I will,” she said, just short of snapping, and he opened his mouth to speak again when a soft “hello?” was spoken behind him.

Belle bolted up from the chair, almost knocking Gold over, and she mouthed a silent “sorry!” as she rushed past him and out to the desk to help whatever moron had wandered into the moment he was having with Belle. It was a moment, surely?

Pulling himself up to standing again with the aid of his cane, he waited until Belle and the library patron were out of sight before walking out of the sorting room and away from the circulation desk. He wanted to look back, wanted to wait for her, but found himself pounding a path out of the place, the hard clacking of his cane against the floor alerting anyone ahead to clear out of his stormy way.

That night the knock came, just as he expected it.

When he opened the door, though, she wasn’t standing there waiting for him, she was pacing. A fitful to and fro, hands knotted into her coat pockets.

“I can’t do it, Gold,” she said. “I can’t speak to him. I can’t confront him. I went to see him today, at the shop, after work, and he just acted like everything was normal, nothing to worry about. And I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t even get my mouth to _open_.”

He could tell she was wringing the inside fabric of her coat by the way it was starting to visibly bunch at her sides. He furrowed his eyebrows. “What are you so afraid he’s going to do, Belle?”

“Lie. Tell the truth. One or the other. Either way, it’ll be awful.”

“Avoiding it solves nothing,” he said.

“I’m aware,” she said, in that nearly snapping voice, and it was like they were right back at the library again. “Tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll get a good night’s sleep, and be ready to face him in the morning.”

“A good night’s sleep?” he scoffed. “Already too late for that.”

“How do you know who Scrooge McDuck is?” she suddenly whirled, planting herself practically toe to toe with him.

“Pardon?” he asked, almost jumping back.

“When would you have _possibly_ been exposed to Scrooge McDuck?”

He tapped his fingers along the door, taking a breath in. “This is important to you?”

She tried to release some of the tension from her posture before answering. “Suddenly. Yes. Very important. I’d like to know.”

“It’d require breaking our deal.”

She chuckled darkly. “And no one breaks a deal with Mr. Gold.”

“No,” he sparked back. “They don’t. So if I’m going to tell you, _you’re_ going to have to tell _me_ too, dearie.”

If he was using that name with her again, she knew she’d hit a nerve. But she was ready, she decided, she was ready to talk it out with him.

“A new deal, then,” she said.

He sighed heavily. “As you wish.”

He held the door open a little wider, and she entered wordlessly, shoulder just lightly brushing him. He led her into the back room after removing her coat as was now their routine, and started brewing their tea as she sat purposely down in her accustomed plush chair.

His back was to her, but he addressed her anyway.

“How do you know who Scrooge McDuck is?” he asked, using her question as his introduction.

“From my childhood,” she said, like it was obvious.

“And how old are you?” he said, turning around and resting his palms on the small table behind him.

Her expression became more poignant. “I’m 28,” she said. “How old are you?”

His mouth twitched; he’d set himself up for the question. “I’m 53.”

“Fancied children’s cartoons when you were 30, did you?” she asked.

“No. When I was 30 my _son_ fancied children’s cartoons.”

Her face fell, and she suddenly felt the heft of her rudeness. “Oh.”

“Yes,” he said. “ _Oh_.”

“I didn’t know you had children,” she said.

“No one in this town does. People will try and use the strangest things against you . . . and other things, not so strange,” he mused. “We’re estranged, my son and I. Along with my ex-wife.”

Belle said nothing, the weight of all he was saying resting on her slowly. Of course he’d been married before. Of course he had a past. Of course this was likely the reason why he always had a stick up his ass. Of course. Of course.

“And I just found out that my son passed away,” he said.

She looked up at him with such dismay and shock that he considered ending it there. But he couldn’t.

“. . . a year ago,” he finished.

Belle blinked, tempted for a moment to rub her eyes but restrained herself. He wasn’t looking at her, but at her hands, braced at her knees.

“You’re saying that you _just_ found out that your son passed away last year,” she said, quiet, controlled.

“Yes,” he responded tightly.

She didn’t say anything. Everything she thought to say sounded stupid and full of pity he wasn’t looking for. So instead she rose, and joined his side at the small table. Tempted to hold him but afraid to upset him, she simply scooted closer, till they were flush shoulder to shoulder, and took his hand gently into her own. He gripped her fingers, tight, almost too tight, and turned his head away from her, perhaps trying to hide tears, though if he was crying he was doing an excellent job of staying silent.

When the water was ready, she moved him to his seat, helped him to sit. She took over brewing the tea, loose leaf and beautiful, and noted silently that her chipped cup was tucked away towards the edge of the table like a sweet secret, and it softened her heart even more.

She brought him his tea, and instead of sitting opposite of him, joined him down at the floor by his legs, resting her head on his knee briefly before looking up to speak.

“Your ex-wife kept this from you?” she asked.

“Milah. And yes, she did. I had been trying to get a hold of my son, Bae, for a while, but I was always dodged. And I let myself be dodged, because I thought it best to allow him to come to me. But this time, something was wrong. My usual leads weren’t making sense. My nights started to stretch with all the time I was taking trying to find him, until the answer finally arrived. I’d lost him. He was gone. My opportunity to fix us, gone. Gone, Belle! Oh, _god!_ ”

His hands were shaking at his cup, and his voice was a mixture of misery and wrath. She took the cup and set it down on the floor. His hands darted into his own hair, running over his scalp over and over in slow, languid motion, and she held his arms at the elbows, doing her best to reassure him in soft words and caresses with her thumbs.

After a few moments he regained himself, but his head was still down, the fringe of his hair ghosting over his face and his eyes heavy and black when he looked at her.

“Don’t go,” he said, “stay with me tonight.”

The sudden and intimate request fluttered at her chest. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

“Because you’re mad at me,” his head swayed closer to her.

She backed away.  “Angry. Livid. Brooding on the dark side of the moon _mad_.”

“Because of your father. Because of how you found us, how I was treating him. That’s what’s been keeping you up all these past nights. Because of me, because of my folly.”

“Why did you have to be so cruel with him?” she asked, her voice finally straining out that question that’d been boiling in her.

“I’m cruel with everyone.”

“You’re not cruel with me.”

“No . . . when it comes to you, the only person I’m cruel with is myself.”

She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes. “Do you have any idea how much I liked you?”

“That’s all past tense now, is it?”

“God, no. Of course it isn’t.”

He reached for her, but she put a hand out. “Livid, remember?”

“Yes. Dark side of the moon brooding. Sorry.”

She was now on the floor cross-legged across from him, and their strange dance had resumed, though both felt heavier than ever before during their game, tired and ready to give up, ready to let the black sleep take them.

“Talk to him, tomorrow,” Gold said, voice small. “Like you said you would. Talk to your father in the morning. Don’t give up on him.”

He was projecting his problems onto her, she knew, and she was tempted to yell at him for it. But she wasn’t as insensitive as that, and instead merely nodded her head.

They stayed like that for a bit, her on the floor and he in the chair, until he offered to walk her home like he did every night, and she finally said yes.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d stupidly worried over how walking her home in the cold would affect his leg, but he clearly was well versed in how his leg would handle the cold so she said nothing as he strode next to her, cane tapping lightly with each step. He was agile and fluid despite the injury, anyway; he always had been.

When they reached her home, he tugged on her shoulder in a funny way before allowing her to end the evening, and she saw him pull a book out of his coat, one she had lent to him over a week ago.

“Please,” he said. “Let me read to you.”

She nodded, and they leaned their backs together against her front door. He started in slowly on a conversation between two characters, and the place he chose made for an awkward start, his intention not immediately recognizable until he read the familiar line.

 _“Have you ever loved someone and it became yourself?_ ”

Her breath hitched, causing a raw rake to pass through her windpipe from the chill air she’d been breathing.

“ _Once I was remorseless, but this is another love — it goes everywhere; there is no place for it to stop — it rots me away_.”

“And do I rot you away?” she asked, dark, low.

“Completely. I’m not sure there’s any of me left,” he said.

“You rot me away, too,” she said, before he tucked her inside her home, closing the door behind her, she in the black of her hallway, him in the yellow of her porch light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all your kudos & subscribes to my convoluted bullshit story with its pretentious lit quoting :)  
> Book mentioned is Nightwood by Djuna Barnes


	3. Break My Legs

That morning, everything was blue. The sky was cast like a fragile bubble above her, a gray blue gnawing at the edges of the horizon until it started to drool a steady rain. Her hat was blue, her coat was blue, that bright cerulean kind that seemed garish when paired with the wrong thing. Or maybe it just seemed garish in the moment, because everything felt garish with the difficult confrontation that lay ahead.

Her porch was blue, her door was blue, the plaited wood of the houses around her were blue, and it all blurred together into a strange ocean of blues mixing and swishing together with her anxious steps turning into the only thing her ears could register. She was floating and surely her feet were scraping nothing now, the blues tumbling over her, picking her up and drifting her away. But then, there it was, the peek of green that signaled Game of Thorns lay ahead, and she was grounded again, so quickly and painfully that she was sure she felt the jerk in her ankles from her abrupt landing from her thoughts.

It was a beautiful shop. It was a beautiful shop and her father was throwing it away. If her fear wouldn’t carry her over to him, her anger would.

He wasn’t the drinking type, not in the morning, anyway. Though perhaps he’d be nursing a hangover, somewhere. But no, she was certain he’d be here, at the shop, sober and waiting for her. It was only a matter of time before she found out he hadn’t paid Gold with the money she’d given him, so when she stepped into the shop through the back room and he was seated calmly at the familiar small white desk, she knew he’d been waiting for her. She used to take orders for him at that desk, with that same dirty beige rotary phone sitting in front of him. It was unplugged from the wall, she saw.

“Belle,” he said, speaking first, voice croaky. “How are you?”

“That’s a terrible way to start this conversation,” she said.

She wanted to wait for him to speak, but she knew if she did that he’d simply say nothing. He was a master of unfilled silence, empty and hollow and somehow heavier than his own voice. He’d let years fill up with that silence, and the weight of all that empty was starting to sag so badly she was certain that’s exactly where the bags under his eyes had come from. She wasn’t about to let him fill this up with his _empty_ , he was going to speak with her, finally.

The temptation to be unkind was strong. But if he started rubbing his palms along his thighs the way he did when Gold had interrogated him, she’d start shaking and crying and that simply wasn’t going to happen.

“Dad,” she said.

He stood, and opened the top drawer of the desk, slipping out a crisp white envelope. Just as white as when she had given it to him.

“So you didn’t spend it,” she said, taking the seat across from him. She let the envelope hang in midair, until he eventually set it on the desk.

“You thought I had?” he replied, voice suggesting he was surprised that he hadn’t either.

“You’re being evicted, dad. You’re letting it happen.”

“I am,” he said, sluggish as he looked around the back room and out the door that led to the front. “I hate this place.”

Belle sniffed. Damn it, when did she start crying?

He didn’t look at her, didn’t acknowledge her tears. They were silent, sliding down of their own accord and unaccompanied by sobs, but they were there, and they were being ignored, as was her father’s habit.

“I hate this place,” he said again. “I’m done with it, and it’s done with me. Problem is, I was done with it a long time ago.”

He wasn’t just talking about the shop, then. Storybrooke. But she hooked onto the shop anyway.

“Game of Thorns is _us_ , Dad. Me. You. Mom. How can you tell me you hate it?”

He was quiet. He always let long stretches go in between replies. It drove her crazy, crazy enough that as a teenager she’d simply leave the room. She wouldn’t leave now.

“This shop was never your mother,” he said finally.

“But, it was your gift to her . . .”

“I thought it was what she wanted,” he said, and when she looked at him she saw that his ears were turning a funny shade of pink, appearing red against the green of the shop. She knew what the pink meant, that his head was filling with words but his mouth didn’t know how to push them out. His voice grew gruff and stilted from the attempt, but she held his gaze to keep him talking.

“I got this shop for her . . . when we were new, and I, I thought, she’d love it, she’d love me. But she did love me. Already.She loved this stupid old man you’re looking at, and I was too dumb to see that I could have given her _anything_ and she’d have been happy. After she’d passed, I read her journals and they said as much. She hated this place too but loved that I’d given it to her. Don’t you see? I gave her a bad gift. A gift of brick and debt.”

Mom’s journals. Belle had read them, of course. She felt her father was loosely interpreting her entries, but he was right that Mom wasn’t wild about Storybrooke.

So there it was. All he wanted was to get out. She could understand that, she could, but why had he gone about it like this? Letting his spirit fade and whimper and extinguish those around him. He’d been dying for years, she realized, carrying his death slowly with him, letting it kill everything else first.

It seemed he had gotten out his paragraph for the day, so they sat in awkward silence before she stood again.

“You could have said something. You could have warned me,” she said.

“You were helping your old man out. I wanted you to have that, if only for a moment.”

“That moment means nothing when you go and do this,” she said, motioning vaguely to the shop. And he didn’t say anything then, didn’t even sigh.

 _Sorrow_ , Gold had said, _I know sorrow when I see it_. Gold felt sorrow for his son, but Moe felt sorrow for himself. Somewhere in her stomach she felt pity, and she decided to grab onto it.

“At least let me help you clean up this place,” she said, and her father nodded. They headed out into the main shop together. She went over his records with him and tallied the rest of the inventory, then went to help him sweep up behind the counter where he never bothered to clean.

“So, where are you going to go?” she asked. She knew he’d been living at his own shop for the past few years. It wasn’t a terrible arrangement, the shop was equipped for it, though the quarters above the shop were small.

“To Portland,” he said, “to join Phillipe on his boat.”

Her Uncle Phillipe owned a fishing boat off the Maine coast where he ran deep sea fishing charters for tourists. “I’m going to join him on his Alaskan fishing trip this year. Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to go, Belle?”

She didn’t. He wasn’t one for sharing his dreams with her.

“I should have brought you some cyclamens, then,” she said.

“Cyclamens,” he repeated noncommittally.

Her father was well acquainted with the flower with the upturned petals, but he obviously didn’t understand why she was bringing them up. “They mean goodbye . . . resignation?” she said.

He chuckled, wiping a hand over his face. “You were the one who always knew flowers. I relied on you and a crap internet connection to tell me whatever they meant.”

Belle giggled at that, memories of bouquet selection and rattling off meanings to him jostling her brain. At the moment she was helping to sweep a pile of purple petals up. Moe stopped his activity by the register and watched her, his expression falling again into that tired glazed look. Like he wasn’t there, like he was gone.

“Why isn’t purple the color of depression?” her father asked idly. “It’s all that red of love and blue of sadness. Mixes up into that blurry mess of depression.”

She stopped sweeping. He’d never mentioned depression before, and she silently cursed herself. He might not have been a wonderful father, but she clearly hadn’t been a wonderful daughter either.

“The color of depression is probably different for everyone,” Belle ventured. After a minute or two she plucked a quote from her mind, “ _I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it_.”

He chuckled, then moved into a deep throaty laugh. “That from one of your books? You used your book voice.”

God, he recognized her book voice but had never once read her a bedtime story.

“Yeah. _The Color Purple._ Aptly titled.”

She finished sweeping to her satisfaction, and helped him gather the last of the flowers into proper bouquets at a last ditch sale effort.

“Let’s at least look at it one last time,” she whispered, and he knew what she meant.

They stepped out of the shop together and walked down until they were across the street. They seated themselves on the stoop of the sidewalk directly in front of the shop, and let the end of the morning settle around them.

“Will you ever come back? Not just for a visit, I mean?” she asked.

He turned his head towards the shop and huffed out a loud sigh. “This town traps people, Belle. And if anyone gets out, it’s you youth, with your big dreams and college and whatnot. You always think there’s no hope for us old folk, well . . . I’m getting out.”

She nodded and huddled deeper into her coat. The rain still drizzled around them.

“Have you ever had a dream, Belle?” he asked abruptly in a weird voice. The question rubbed her the wrong way, like he wasn’t her father at all, like he shouldn’t already be fully aware of its answer. He’d never once asked her, and she knew he wasn’t really asking her now, so she scowled to herself, and said nothing.

“Phillipe and I are going to Alaska, so no, I don’t think I’ll be coming back. I want to start something new. A new life. Go wild. I’m going to find a ship, call it home. Or maybe work at a fishery.”

The image seemed comical, as she couldn’t help but picture him as a pirate. Belle closed her eyes. “Why not go back to Australia?”

“I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to peddle in reverse.”

That philosophy made sense for him. He wasn’t one to acknowledge the past, much less the present. She looked around the ground at her feet, noticing a stray purple petal that had likely stuck to her shoe now lay plastered against a small, glimmering rock. There were several small rocks near them, she realized. Tiny but aware, alert and looking right back at her, giving her an idea. She reached for the rock with the petal on it.

She had little to offer her father. But she could at least give him this. She was still mad, but sometimes anger just needed to slip away before it boarded up opportunity.

She stood up, rock in hand, rolling it around a few times in her fingers, then launched it at the shop, hitting her target true. The rock sailed through the Game of Thorns sign, its awning fabric with their logo in waterproof paint she’d done herself several years before. The rock tore through the rose on the top left that curled over the logo’s _G_ , and a second rock sailed through the sign’s _M_ , until Moe grabbed Belle’s arm.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. “Gold’ll kill you!”

“No he won’t,” she said. “He’s just going to tear down that sign anyway. And even if he wasn’t . . . damn him. Damn him, dad! Come on,” she placed a rock in his hand, “I know you want to.”

She didn’t actually know if defiling the doomed store’s signage was at the top of his to do list, but it had certainly sailed to the top of hers. Rock after rock they destroyed the sign, until the tatters were so wide the rocks simply hit the bricks behind it and pattered down to the lower, narrower awning that brimmed along the storefront’s entrance and sides.

“There,” she said, turning to her dad, “you’ve just begun your wild new life.”

The pink in his ears was now the pink in his cheeks, and it wasn’t from anger, but delight. “Yes,” he said. “This is my toast to a new beginning,” he laughed, loud and short. “Thank you, Belle.”

She didn’t stay with him long. The man could only handle so much conversation in one sitting, and it wasn’t long before his words were sparse again. But a comfort had settled over them, an understanding that perhaps all would be well after all. Or at least better than how they’d left it. Maybe she’d actually get a good night’s sleep for once.

Maybe.

The world wasn’t blue anymore. It had gone a funny black, with the clouds rolling a steady rumble through the sky. The growling of thunder didn’t normally bother her, and it certainly didn’t now. It gave her little bites of exhilaration, and there was something about her heels clicking into the pavement as the drops of rain began to plop harder that made her want to smile. She was huddling a bouquet close to her chest, a mismatched pairing of white chrysanthemums, blue delphiniums, and pink peonies. It was tied together hastily in blue and white striped twine and wrapped in gold paper. _Gold_ , her mind whispered.

His shop was right around the corner, and the library lay ahead.

She turned the corner.

She entered just as another customer was leaving; a disgruntled Dr. Whale from the looks of it. Gold was standing at the counter looking grumpy himself, and he didn’t turn immediately to notice her because for all he knew the tinkling of bells only indicated that Whale had left, and nothing more. He turned, his back to her, and she watched as he reached forward for something, the lines of his shoulder blades and spine evident. She liked those lines, and wanted to run her fingers against them in a race, one hand rivaling the other, until they’d both cross the finish line into his hair.

A clap of thunder had him jumping and jerking his face towards the windows and entrance. She didn’t have time to wonder if thunderstorms frightened him, because she was dashing the flowers onto his counter and turning to leave just as quickly as she’d come in, though with a pitiful amount of the same discretion. No discretion at all. She rushed outside and around the corner, lightning patterning its way behind her, and made it to the library in just the nick of time to get it open for the day.

Terrible weather as it was, one patron of Storybrooke was huddled beneath an umbrella waiting for her to open the doors. Once at a reasonable closeness she could see it was Jefferson, the town eccentric.

“It’s positively _mad_ out here,” he commented, helping her underneath his umbrella as she unlocked the doors.

She thanked him and let him duck inside, and only turned around briefly to see a figure across the way staring after her in the swirl of wild light and rain, hands clutching a ruined bouquet of white, blue, pink, and gold.

That evening it was all she could see behind her eyes as she tried to sleep.

Things with her father were sorted, however haphazardly, but sleep wouldn’t come. Things with Gold had shifted gears into something easier, but sleep still wouldn’t come.

Gold. Yes, it was something easier, like a friendship with the twinge of more; if she let it simmer it’d find its own way to burst into flames, all she had to do was stoke its embers from time to time. But she didn’t want _time to time_ , she wanted _now_. She wanted that burst of flames so hot she’d regret the burns they’d leave behind. She wanted touch and she wanted taste, she wanted the way his voice sounded in her ear to be the way it felt to be held by him. 

 _Do the brave thing_.

She stretched and tossed off her covers. The room wasn’t bathed in soft yellow, because she had wistfully believed the black would take care of her now. Her boots weren’t calling to her, they were yelling, the strange screech of a siren as she tumbled down the staircase, sweater and coat ready to go as she tugged the boots on impatiently.

The night was the same black as her bedroom, the stars an abundant pair of eyes twinkling at her in a sinister way. She blinked back at them, eyes more raw than ever, tongue dry and heavy. The scent of the thunderstorm was still thick in the air, tangible like the pattering of her boots as they occasionally squelched in shallow puddles.

When she reached his shop, she had to rub her eyes. His light wasn’t on. Perhaps the black had swallowed it up, too? Perhaps the sinister look of the stars had been teasing winks, knowing her sanctuary had finally been closed off to her? I shouldn’t have come, I shouldn’t have come . . .

_Break my legs so I won’t walk to you_

_Cut my tongue so I can’t talk to you_

_Burn my skin so I can’t feel you_

_Stab my eyes so I can’t see_

She shouldn’t have given in to herself, she should have closed off her longing, should have assailed herself to keep her from walking his way . . .

But then the figure was there, the black against the gray, yet this time it wasn’t holding ruined flowers, but the door, his door, and he was calling out to her.

She rubbed her eyes one last time, then strode over to him, broken legs and cut tongues be damned.

“I was worried you weren’t here,” she said.

“I was worried you’d think I wasn’t here. My lamp’s bulb burnt out,” his eyes reflected hers, the pupils too big, the edges piped in red.

“Why didn’t you just turn on the regular switches?”

He made a face. “Too garish for this time of night. Come in, have some tea before it gets cold.”

“You knew I’d be coming again, didn’t you?” she said, the beginnings of a wide smile playing at her lips.

“I knew that I’d hope you’d come. And I like to be ready for every possibility.”

“Except, perhaps, a spare light bulb.”

He chuckled, and she laughed too, the sounds mingling together in that sticky black all around them. She loved it. Yes, cut tongues be damned.

He held out his hand, curved in invitation, and when she passed him to go into the shop he placed it on the small of her back, guiding her through, his walk confident in its path despite the low visibility.

“Do you have candles?” she asked.

“I was just about to stumble around blindly looking for them, actually. Care to help?”

She smiled in the dark. “I’d love to.”

His hand didn’t leave her as he guided her to the back room.

She only had a vague sense of where everything was in his shop. She’d spent enough nights here to know the edge of the counter and table here, the situated spot of the chairs there. But she bumped into something, tripping forward and trying to regain herself but failing. His arms went around her, catching her with care, easing her fall into a gentle plop onto the floor with him beside her.

“You all right?” he asked through the black.

She couldn’t see him at all; the things she saw with her eyes open were the same with her eyes closed. But she could feel his breath at her ear and his hands on her shoulder and arm, the rest of him cradled beneath her.

“Your leg!” she said, “I’m so sorry, I must be crushing it!”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he said, though the tremor she felt go through his body gave him away. She rolled off of him, but kept a hand at his chest so he’d know where she was.

He made no move to get up, so neither did she. She moved her hand to his shoulder, then his neck, and gasped when she felt his hand on her arm.

“You’re still in your coat,” he said.

“You’re not wearing your tie,” she said.

“I took it off, how you like it.”

She moved her hand down to skim the skin at the hollow of his throat, up to his Adam’s apple, then down again. When her fingers had traced their way to where the second button of his shirt was still clasped, his hand had grabbed her.

For a brief moment she expected a scolding but his voice didn’t touch her in the dark, and she had no way to comprehend his facial expression or body language. Just that hand, now guiding itself down her arm and up, until it found its way to her own throat, making small and delicate traces that seared her. The embers, she thought.

“You’re still in your coat,” he repeated again, gruffer, and then she felt him pushing at it, pulling at its opening and tugging on a sleeve. She assisted him, maneuvering the heavy fabric up and off of her, and she sat up slightly to help him, feeling the move was awkward, briefly grateful for the blackness to hide it.

When the coat was cast aside they lay back on the floor, or she assumed they both did. She certainly did. She could feel his hands on her, but it was hard to determine his position. One hand had snuck down and was rubbing small circles into her wrist, while the other stayed dutifully at her elbow. The small circles were all she could feel or think for a moment.

“If only we could sleep like this,” she said.

“If only we could sleep,” he said.

She chuckled. “The tea will get cold.”

“Fuck tea,” he said, and she felt him moving. Closer, stronger, and then there it was, his breath, somewhere at her temple, and his lips, ghosting along. Her heart puttered up into her throat, and she reached up to grab at either end of the collar of his open shirt, wherever it was in the dark, and ended up dragging her palms along his chest to reach them. The touch caused him to heave out a brief hiss before he moved his lips along her forehead.

“They were for you,” she mumbled. “The flowers. They were an apology.”

“An apology?” he said, mouth between her eyes.

“Yes. For destroying your shop sign.”

A pause, lips over one closed eye. “Your definition of ‘destroy’ must be ‘leave perfectly intact.’”

“Well, not _your_ shop sign, not the pawn shop. I destroyed the Game of Thorns sign.”

A deep chuckle, the rumble close enough for her to run her fingers down his throat as she heard it, so she did. “I suppose you have your reasons for that, and I won’t begrudge them,” he said, voice hitching.

“Especially since the sign is now moot, anyway.”

Lips pausing at her cheek. “Yes,” he offered, “a fact both fortunate and not.”

Lips at her jaw, the small scraping of teeth, then the shuddering of breath. Was it her breath or his?

“What's keeping you up tonight, my Belle?”

 _His_ Belle, that was new. Yes, yes, she thought, I am yours. She felt the fringe of his hair dancing all over her face, and she pushed her hands up to feel its softness tangle in her fingers. The embers were burning brighter, stoking softly.

“I went to my father, this morning,” she said.

He pulled back. “Tell me,” he said.

She explained her morning to him, how her father had kept the money all along, how he was giving up on the shop, how he was giving up on Storybrooke. She told him about her Uncle Phillipe, and the boat in Maine, the boat in Alaska. Gold made a funny sort of sound when she mentioned the boats, and she stored that tidbit away for later. She then told him how she tried to leave the shop without taking the envelope with her, so her father would still have the money for his journey.

“Do you really think he’ll accept it this time?” Gold asked.

“No,” Belle sighed. “Because he slipped it back into my bag when I wasn’t looking. I found it later when I got to the library. I brought it with me; it’s in my coat pocket.”

“Why did you bring it?”

“To give to you. I know eviction doesn’t mean the debt goes away. He’ll still have to eventually pay you for what he owes. This way he can make a clean break.”

“Is that what’s keeping you up?” he asked, face nuzzled somewhere in her throat but rising up now. “My darling Belle, still so caught up in the pain of your father. Let me fix this for you. Consider the debt forgiven,” he said.

Belle stifled a gasp, “You would do this for him?”

“I’m not doing it for your father. I’m doing it for you.”

Belle sniffed. Damn it, when did she start crying?

They were silent tears again, sliding down without her consent, and Gold reached up a thumb to wipe them away, then his lips to kiss them away.

“I’m doing it for you,” he whispered, “I’m doing it for you.”

She rubbed her hands into the nape of his neck, then the middle between his shoulder blades, finally running along those lines that had teased her earlier. “But that’s not why I came,” she said. “I didn’t come to talk about debt, much less seduce you into forgiving it.”

“Pity,” he said, “you’re accomplishing both.”

She arched her back, pressing her chest into him and stretching her legs, accidentally kicking something. The table, from the sound of it, and something had tumbled off. She gasped and apologized.

“It’s all right, it’s just the candles,” he said. “I’d found the box earlier but set it aside when I had the intuition to look outside and find you.”

“What told you to look?”

“The hours I spent staring out my dark castle tower waiting for your return.”

She giggled and arched her back again, causing him to moan.

“Why did you come back, Belle?”

“I wasn’t going to,” she said slowly, “but, you see, that night, the first night, when you asked why I said your name . . .”

“Yes,” he cooed. “Why did you say it?”

“But I didn’t say it, you see. I don’t know your name. So I had to come here tonight,” she explained.

“For my name?”

“Yes.”

He had moved low, hands resting up somewhere between her elbows and shoulders keeping her down while his face dipped down against her belly.

“Give me your name,” she said.

She felt his cheek against her navel, hot breath pushing out in a sigh.

“Give me your name right now or I’m walking out of here,” she said with resolve.

“You’re being very dramatic tonight.”

“You have no idea how tired I am.”

“Actually, I know exactly how tired you are. Precisely so. Because I’m just as bloody tired.”

“Give me your name,” she pressed again. “You're going to give me something right now. An apology or your name. Give it to me.”

She wiggled against him, but he held her in place.

“It's nothing special, Belle,” he said with a sad sigh.

“Of course it is. It's something you hide from everyone. You give it to no one. But you're going to give it to me.” She reached down to rub at his hair affectionately, the strands soft in her fingers.

“Adrian,” he said, finally, trembling for it.

"Adrian," she said. "Adrian and Belle."

“’And?’ We’re together, are we?”

“Of course we are,” she said.

 _You’re damn right we are_ , he thought to himself. _We’ve always been together, you and I_.

“Though,” she said, “when I picture it in my head, it’s not an ‘a-n-d,’ but an ampersand.”

He chuckled. “You certainly do get silly when you’re sleepy.”

“You get silly, too.”

“I haven’t said anything remotely silly since you showed up.”

“No, but you’re nuzzling my breasts like a cat.”

“I am?” he asked sincerely, realizing that, yes, he had lifted up her sweater and was nuzzling her with his stubbly chin.

“ _God_ , Belle, do you ever wear a bra?”

“Of course I do,” she giggled. “Please don’t stop, I like it,” she purred, becoming the cat herself.

He let out a shaky sigh of relief at her acceptance, and continued nuzzling, until he felt confident enough to start placing slow kisses on her, until he was taking a nipple into his mouth and sucking slowly, reaching down with his other hand to knead at her other breast, then switching, until her head was thrashing back and forth and her legs were curling up to squeeze his sides.

“ _Adrian,_ ” she moaned. “Adrian, Adrian.”

He rumbled a smile against her skin. “Yes. I like it when you say it,” he said, sucking in a nipple again. “May I light the candles?” he asked, “I want to see the lovely state you’re in.”

“Yes, yes,” she said shakily.

They rose and fumbled in the dark together, until she felt him placing a candle into her hand while he turned at what she guessed was an attempt to find matches.

The wax felt cold and heavy in her hand. “What kind of candles are these?”

“They’re old. Made by nuns from Italy or somewhere. Very expensive. Let’s light them, shall we?”

The snap of a match glinted in their dark cocoon, bursting momentarily until it dimmed into a tiny flame. He lit her candle first, then dipped hers down to light his. He took both and set them carefully on the table, shadows hovering above them while they huddled together in their new glow of yellow.

They stared at each other for a moment in that glow, both of their eyes low and heavy lidded. She could see the red around his eyes just as keenly as she felt her own, and every line of tiredness drawn onto his face was surely reflected in hers. Dizzy, she reached out a hand to touch his lips.

“Stay with me tonight?” he asked, the brief fear that she’d reject him again crossing his features.

But she nodded, and closed her eyes as he pulled her into him, and they settled down on the floor again, using her coat and a few throw pillows to make it more comfortable. He tugged off her sweater, muttering “beautiful,” when he could finally see the expanse of all he’d been kissing. He traced her sides until his fingers splayed across her ribs and skimmed the bottoms of her breasts before palming them again.

She reached up and undid his shirt, slipping if off down his shoulders. He’d found a blanket somewhere, and they hid underneath it, pressing together skin to skin and burying their foreheads against one another. The contact felt amazing but Belle could also feel the dull ache in her head, the pounding that lack of sleep had given her. Her head was swimming and she tried to focus. The way he was moving against her, his head must have been swimming too.

Her legs were around him again and he was grinding against her slowly, the feeling amazing but slipping in and out of them as a new feeling started to overwhelm them, one they hadn’t been able to welcome for weeks.

“Do you feel it?” she asked, running her fingers up and down his back.

“Yes,” he said, voice low, “I can feel it coming. Sleep. It’s finally, finally coming.”

She was trying to grasp him through his trousers and he was trying to push his hand down the front of her leggings but their movements were clumsy and thwarted by their own dizziness.

“Let me kiss you, Belle,” he said, thumbing at her lower lip after reaching up to cup her face, but she could see his eyes were closed, his words slurred.

“No, not yet,” she said, head surging, “I want the first time we kiss to be in the light.”

“But we lit the damn candles.”

“Not candlelight. Sunlight.”

“I can’t kiss you till morning?”

“Nope,” she said, a lazy smile playing along her mouth.

“Are you an enchanted princess or something?”

“Yes, and if you kiss me you’ll drain all my power away and I’ll become an ordinary woman.”

“You could never be ordinary,” he said, hands moving down. “Can’t kiss you anywhere? Or just the lips?” he asked, wrapping his arms around to engulf her, gently sucking on her neck.

“Ah!” she gasped, arching involuntarily this time. His motions were languid and slow, and his kisses dragged across her skin until he was motionless at her breasts, using them as a pillow. Her eyes fluttered closed, the burning sensation duller now, and the pleasant dark started to settle over her.

He placed kisses across her one last time, settled down again, and moaned as her fingers tangled through his hair, before stilling, and both of their breaths were weighted, and both of them were gone, inside one another, the candles pooling wax across the table until it drained in ribbons to the floor and the flames extinguished themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this was my favorite chapter to write so far.  
> Book mentioned: The Color Purple by Alice Walker  
> Song mentioned: [Your Love Is Killing Me by Sharon Van Etten](http://nerdrumple.tumblr.com/post/95766613770/your-love-is-killing-me-sharon-van-etten)


	4. I Am Treacherous

When he woke up, his arm was cold.

It was the only part of him that had snuck out from their cocoon in the night, stretched out and grasping at nothing. The other was curled around a pair of tiny shoulders, a face buried in his neck and a thick blanket of hair tucked around him. As his eyes opened to the ceiling of his shop back room, they squinted back tight from the light slitting in through the blinds.

_I can’t kiss you till morning?_

He curled his free arm back up into their nest, hand pushing into her hair as he kissed the top of her head and breathed her in. His eyes were so bleary from sleep that her features were mixing together, her long lashes black strings connected to her pink mouth, her auburn hair swirling into her skin, and he pushed his fingers through the muddy mixture, gathering what he could, bringing it to his mouth for a taste.

She stirred at the contact, pulling her head up and smiling as he pushed his nose at her hairline.

“Good morning,” he mumbled, caressing one cold hand and one hot down her bare back, the strange sensation rousing her quickly.

“We did it,” she said, voice creaking from first use, “we slept.”

“And ruined my carpet,” he muttered with a smile, and she turned to see him looking towards the melted candles.

“Those candles were expensive, you know,” she said.

“Very,” he said, rolling until he was hovering above her, the removed contact causing some of the chill air of the shop to invade their blanket and her skin to pebble. The slits of sunlight were casting stripes across her, and he traced them across her collarbones, up into her neck and over her chin, till the pads of his fingertips were running over her lips.

“The sun is kissing you,” he said. “And I do believe it’s my turn.”

The fringe of his hair was framing her face, its tips ghosting along and tickling her cheeks. If eyes could shake hers certainly were, until they were closed to him, either in anticipation or apprehension, he couldn’t tell.

“Unless you find yourself suffering from regret this morning,” he murmured, thumbs running over her lashes in an encouraging gesture for her to open them and look at him.

“No,” she said. “I came here last night seeking regret, but that was my midnight self. My daylight self is perfectly aware of the things I lie to myself about at night.”

“And what do you lie to yourself about?”

“That you’re nothing but a midnight ritual, the man I go to in the dark. But we’re in the light now, and, and,”

“And?”

She wet her lips with her tongue, and yes, her eyes and lips and tongue were shaking.

“Say it. Say it like it’s midnight,” he encouraged, fingers massaging her scalp.

“You say it, Adrian,” she smiled.

“I want you,” he said, simply answering honestly for himself, not even sure if that was what she was driving at. He said it with an unabashed smile on his face, and before she could return the sentiment or he could lean forward and finally kiss her, there was a banging at the door.

He crinkled his face in annoyance, and hid his face in her throat. “Jefferson . . .” he muttered. “I forgot to lock the door last night.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“We have a weekly appointment. He’s early.”

Belle raised her eyebrows but didn’t ask for any more details, because the banging at the door had become the banging of the door as it swung open and closed, and Gold watched as she became keenly aware of her wild hair and flushed skin.

She had talked about the nighttime and the daytime selves they possessed, and here it was, her night self resigning, folding in as the daytime self came rushing forward, smoothing down her hair into something proper and fumbling for her sweater. They helped each other sort their clothes back on, hands brushing backs and shoulders before the swishing of fabric hid them. Gold, looking as reasonable as he could for a man who’d spent the night in the back of his shop, stepped out first.

“ _Lovely_ morning we’re having!”  Jefferson said as he greeted him with a flourish. Gold muttered something to him about a new shipment of vintage clothing and Jefferson trilled something in affirmation before trailing off in the direction Gold had indicated. With Jefferson somewhat out of sight, Gold pulled back the curtain and motioned for Belle to come out.

“You forgot this,” she whispered, holding out his tie but roving her eyes over the shop for Jefferson’s location. Her sweater was skewed, revealing a partial but alluring amount of her right shoulder, and Gold reached for the exposed skin, brushing his fingers over a delicious red bloom of a mark he’d given her last night.

“We have a moment or two,” he assured her, admiring the tiny, frail picture of herself she was painting with her furrowed eyebrows and sheepish smile. She reached up to smooth down his hair again while he smoothed hers, and when she was satisfied she started looping his tie through his collar until it was retied properly.

“There,” she said, tapping it softly and framing her hands over his chest to admire her work. He thanked her, helping her with her coat as she started to mutter her goodbye when Jefferson appeared again, prattling about his appreciation for various types of velvet. His mouth was open to continue but hung there when he saw the two, instead of the one, he was expecting. His hesitation was dramatically long as he eyed them with a look of surprise, then suspicion. Belle blushed furiously at everything her disheveled look implied, not to mention the hand Gold had at some point placed possessively on her elbow.

Jefferson took a few tentative steps forward. “The librarian’s behind the counter,” he said.

“Yes,” Gold said, turning the word into an icy question.

“I’ve never been behind the counter.”

“Yes?”

“Can I be behind the counter?”

“ _No_.”

“I’ll just browse your hats then,” Jefferson said cheerily, sauntering back around.

“I should be going,” Belle said, eyes squeezed shut, still blushing. “This librarian needs to get behind her own counter.”

Gold’s face was slumped into a grouch at their interruption, and Belle tried to quell him by placing a quick kiss on his cheek before she sped out the door, causing his eyebrows to fly up. The moment she was gone, Jefferson was right back.

“The librarian gave you a kiss,” Jefferson said.

“Yes,” Gold said, same icy question.

“Well, I’ve never—“

“Yes?”

“Can I give you a—“

“ _No_.”

After spending the polite amount of time necessary in his meeting with Jefferson before running him off, Gold closed up his shop and headed home. He didn’t feel like pawn broking today. Everything felt lucid and murky, and all he wanted to do was crash into his bed. The pull was strong, one he hadn’t welcomed in a long time, so he gave it his full approval and let it drift him home.

The sun was slitting into his home through his blinds the same way it had in the shop. It made his stomach flutter, a sensation he hadn’t felt since a teen. It made him laugh out loud, but his own laughter, abrupt and strange in the quiet of his home, felt out of place there, and he closed his mouth immediately. Familiar scowl back in place, he trudged up his stairs.

He stared at his bed with its deep blue covers, and ran a hand lightly over the fabric. Things were different now, he knew. The Gold of yesterday would curl up into bed without a thought – no, that wasn’t right. The Gold of yesterday probably wouldn’t have even given into this temptation, to come home and drown. He would have pressed on and kept the shop open for the day. A shower and new suit would have undoubtedly been in order, though.

He sat on the bed, and ran his hands over his wool coat before removing it, and tugged at the tie Belle had so carefully knotted for him. He let his scowl fall, and smiled at the memory. _Disheveled_ was a state with which he was unfamiliar, but the reasons behind it had him glowing, something soft and low in his belly. _You rot me away,_ he’d said, and he could feel that sensation, the delightful decay, taking his old self away, bringing in something new, something he hadn’t felt it years, if he’d ever felt it at all.

He touched the fabric of the bed again, gripping it tight this time, the feel luxurious in his hand and the color just what he was looking for, but not here. I’ll bring it back with me, he thought, the color I’m after, I’ll go and fetch my blue, and bring it home.

The shower and crisp new suit remained on the agenda, and in quick time he was out the door again, tugging his leather gloves on and donning sunglasses against the ridiculously bright and day. It was still early when he found himself passing the library on his way to Belle’s, and he was surprised to find it open, despite Belle’s statement that she needed to arrive there soon.

So. She hadn’t figured it out yet.

He snuck in slowly, doing his best to avoid the use of his cane and the tapping it’d create. When he found her, she was tucked between shelves, and he hid himself behind one, spying on her through the books. She was high upon her step ladder, hair fresh and frame redressed in one of her delicious form fitting dresses. Something deep blue, making this all too perfect. She was brushing her hand over the cover of a particular book, eyes closed as she reached for its spine. She ran her fingers over it as it if weren’t a spine at all, but a pale substitute for a pair of neck and shoulders.

“Adrian,” she said, and he held his breath in alarm, afraid he’d been caught. But she wasn’t looking at him, and his name had been murmured like a questioning prayer, so he remained where he was.

“Adrian,” she said his name again, thoughtfully, privately, with more resolve. Stroking that spine again. He ventured a silent step forward to see if he could catch the title of the book. Anything that garnered this behavior from her deserved a special place on his bookshelf. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make it out.

When she said his name a third time he couldn’t help it. He was being summoned, and to ignore her would be sinful.

“I'm sorry,” she jumped at his presence, almost dropping the book. “I thought I was alone.”

“We're never alone, dearie.”

She paused at the endearment, the twist on his usual condescending term not lost on her. She stepped down from the ladder, her knees swishing open just a moment to allow him to peer past her thighs and his mouth twitched at the sight. 

“I came here to make a request,” he said, but she practically ignored him, reaching up to touch his lapel, quiet with her lips parted, concentrating on the knot of his new tie. Also a deep blue.

“Any moment now . . . you can ask me what it is.”

“Sorry,” she chuckled. “You’re just so handsome. Sometimes it renders me quite dumb.”

He felt his face warm red at the compliment. He wasn’t used to such talk, and it gave him the courage to indulge in it himself.

“Funny to hear that from a woman whose very name defines your radiant appearance.”

“Don’t,” she said. “I mean, you can call me beautiful, but don’t be formal. There’s more between us now, don’t you think?”

Yes. Yes there was.

He cupped her chin in between his index finger and thumb, forcing her face up to his, but her eyes were closed, like a cat purring into the touch of its master, and it made his breath catch at the intimacy and trust it implied she felt for him. Like she felt safe. With him, of all people. It had him melting for her, and he knew the arrogance wasn’t necessary, but it was hard to let go of a persona he was so used to inhabiting.

“Belle. My Belle,” he said, trying to find the right words for her, something special, but they were coming out simple. “You’re so beautiful. Darling Belle. You look lovely, as usual, but I find that I—”

“Liked me better this morning?” she whispered with a smile.

“When you were topless beneath me? Yes, there was something more special about it. Your hair, especially. Delightfully ruffled,” he said a volume too loud for her dignity.

“ _Shhh_ ,” she said, but kept smiling. “Someone will hear you!”

“Your library overrun with patrons, is it?” he asked, looking around with exaggerated movements.

“Well, not yet, but it’s early still.”

“It is. Are you anticipating many people today?”

“Same as any other day,” she said, crooking an eyebrow, suddenly wondering what he was getting at.

“Close up today,” he said, request finally stated. “Close up and come with me.”

“You’re bold,” she said, but she’d brought up both hands to cup the one that held her chin, and he knew he had her, even if she was shaking her head.

“We’ll sleep,” he insisted.

“But we already slept.”

“We’ve been insomniacs for weeks. One night of sleep isn’t nearly enough.”

“You just want me in your bed,” she smiled.

“Was there any doubt?”

She was shaking her head and pulling away from him, picking up her book like she was preparing to shelve it but instead ran her finger along its spine again. He swallowed.

He came up behind her, running a hand carefully down the side of her bare arm. “It’s the perfect day to close,” he said.

“Because the sun is shining? Books don’t care about the weather, and you haven’t exactly offered a walk or picnic.”

“No, because—” but he hesitated in his smile, finding the whole thing all too funny. Coaxing her to the answer would be more fun.

“We’ll sleep,” he insisted a second time, running both hands down her arms now. “Nothing more.”

“If that’s a promise then I’m _definitely_ _not_ coming.”

He smiled at her playfulness, and turned her around in his arms. “Belle, close up the library.”

“I can’t just neglect my duties,” she said seriously.

“ _Belle_.”

“What?”

“What time did you open the library yesterday?”

She paused, thinking. “Noon. I opened it at noon.”

“Because?”

“Because we open later on Saturdays.”

“Meaning?”

“That today is Sunday,” she buried her face in her hands. “And we’re closed.”

He chuckled as she finally reached her proper reasoning. He pulled her into him, leaving his chest a better place to bury her face than her hands. “Now close up this fantastic opportunity for people to attend your wonderful library on a day it’s normally closed and come home with me.”

“Home,” she mused. “Your home?”

“Exactly where I want you.”

“Will you make love to me?”

He let out a shaky, surprised sigh, breaking his careful facade. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do. But yes, ravishment was on my agenda.”

“I thought you said there’d be nothing more than sleep.”

“My hips tend to wander when I doze. You might find them pressed against yours in due time.”

They left the library arm in arm, Belle’s blushes deepening from self-depreciating remarks over her remarkable feat to open the library on a Sunday, and deepening more when Gold combated each one, saying any brilliant mind would be flimsy after he’d kept it up so late in his shop.

Once out on the street he was overcome with the funny desire to run, hand in hand, breathless and smiling with his beautiful Belle, stealing shared glances as they pounded their way to his home. It wasn’t to be, of course, his bum leg wouldn’t allow it, and his dignity certainly wouldn’t either. But the high feeling it gave him, that simple desire to be rash and silly, filled him up and boiled until it could settle into one simple thing he could give her, an easy smile. She returned it, and the boiling continued.

“Your house is pink,” she said when they were finally crossing the threshold of his yard. Whether her tone was neutral or surprised, he couldn’t tell.

He opened his mouth to protest, but didn’t. “So it is,” he said, resigned.

Once inside, Gold hung his coat and turned to take Belle’s, but she was wandering forward, eyes wide as she admired the sight in front of her. “This is where you live,” she said, and again, he couldn’t quite place her tone. He wanted to shoot something sharp and funny in return, but held his tongue as she turned around to face him with a funny glint in her eye. It was awe, it was appreciation, it was . . . something else, something that wasn’t there before.

He leaned against his hallway banister as she had started to lean against the opposite wall, allowing the distance to become its own form of intimacy, a tangible space of the anticipation that pulled between them. A steady staff of sunlight streamed in across the hallway, and he could just make her out through the brightness.

“The sun’s up,” he commented.

“It is,” she said.

“If I kiss you now, will you lose your powers?”

“No. If you kiss me now, I’ll gain them.”

“Then I’d better get started,” he said. But he didn’t rush forward, instead moved slowly through the sunlight, until he emerged from the beam on the other side and gripped the arms of her coat. He rubbed the fabric at her elbows, then up to her shoulders, then let his index finger and thumb tug and smooth her lapel. It was familiar, like they’d done at the library so many times before. Their introductory skin.

“Whenever you did that,” she said, “I imagined you were touching me instead. Really touching me.”

“You often did the same thing to me, as I recall.”

“Yes,” she said, reaching for his own lapels, then the knot of his tie, tugging on it, smoothing it over with her thumbs as she slid it through the collar. “I wanted to touch you.”

“God. Yes. Touch me.”

He closed his eyes while she slowly made her way through the buttons of his shirt. He let his hands move idly to her throat, fingers cupping around the column of her neck, thumbs moving up along each bump until he was tilting her head up and back. He circled his thumbs along her jaw line then back down again, imagining her voice box underneath, and how pleasant it was when she used it to speak his name, and the breathy little gasps she sighed last night and how desperate he was to hear them again.

He pushed her coat off and it fell to the floor with a neglected whisper. He grabbed her hands, having successfully opened his shirt and waistcoat, and brought them to his face, kissing their palms and wrists.

“I want you, Belle. Not just the you I had in my shop last night, every night for the past three weeks, or the you in front of me now. I want all of your parts. The ones wrapped around your skeleton and the ones that put wrinkles into your brain. Oh, Belle, let me kiss you.”

“No,” she said, but the breathiness was there, “ _I_ want to be the one to kiss _you_.”

“That’s some awfully tricky fine print.” 

“Well, you’re the one who’s all about the incriminating details.” 

“And I always come out on top,” he said, bumping his nose with hers until she was finally pulling him into her, and not just her open, wet mouth, but her body into his, the lace of her dress rough against his chest where her breasts pressed into him.

They spoke a funny language then, gasps when he yanked at her zipper, sighs when he traced her spine, chokes when she moved against him and he moved back. He could feel her soft parts and her solid parts, her plush mouth against his thin, drawn one. He bit down on her lip, then her neck. “I want you, too,” she murmured, and he yanked down her dress, clawing it from her arms as he bit at her neck, causing her to shake.

About to kiss her again as he removed her bra, he paused.

“You’re covered,” he said, in awe at the sight of her.

“Covered?”

“My mark . . . it’s all over you. How did I not see it before?”

Because of that damn squinty sun this morning, he thought. He ran his hands over her breasts and higher, and she blinked until she realized he was talking about the little purple and red blooms from where he’d kissed and sucked her the night before. She’d seen them in her bathroom mirror that morning, and they’d made her blush with a warmth that engulfed her entire body.

“We’ve barely made it through the doorway,” he said.

“Where do you want me?”

“My bed, of course. If the blue of that dress looked so splendid on you, I can only imagine the loveliness of your color against the blue of my sheets.”

They trudged up the stairs together, a funny pair with her dress hanging half off her and his shirt wide open. He leaned some of his weight on her, an arm around her shoulders and her hand holding his with their fingers intertwined. When they reached the top of the landing she paused, and when he looked at her he saw that awe again. He wasn’t sure what it was about his home that intrigued her so, other than it was merely his, and he promised himself to offer her a tour after, but for now there were more pressing matters. Literally pressing too tight against his trousers. And there would be time for tours. There would be time for everything he wanted to show her.

“Your room,” she breathed when they’d reached it, and he smiled but said nothing. He’d successfully brought his blue right where he wanted her. They made their way to the bed and she started to move forward to crawl atop it, but he stopped her.

“Turn around,” he said.

He removed the thin belt she wore at her waist, then made work at pushing her dress down her hips, running his hands appreciatively up over her rear on his way back. She pulled his mouth up to hers again and he joined her enthusiastically, his arms tight around her until he realized she was trying to push at his layers.

“Please, you too,” she was mumbling against his skin, and he obliged her in removing his jacket, shirt and waistcoat. She stared at his chest in awe, and he didn’t have time to worry if his thin frame was enough for her, because she’d started nipping and sucking at his skin the way he’d nipped and sucked her last night, and he briefly wondered if she was creating the same pattern of red and purple she wore, so they could mirror one another and trace constellations later.

She was trembling under his touch, trembling so hard he pulled away to briefly look at her. “Belle?” he questioned.

“I’m sorry, I’m so nervous. But I’m also so excited. It’s this crazy mixture in me, touching and tasting you, it’s giving me so much—”

“Adrenaline,” he finished.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry, it’s been so long. Not just sex, but being with someone I love. And I’ve loved you for so long, this has been building for so long, I, I,”

Before he could stop her, she was sitting on the bed and pulling off his belt, her nose rubbing his taut erection lovingly, and he had to brace himself at the pleasure it shot through him so he wouldn’t topple over. His mind was racing, and that trembling running through her was now running through him. She’d admitted she loved him, with no fear other than the nervousness she’d also admitted to. He had to admit himself now too, he realized.

She removed his pants in a swift move, running her hands back up over his rear the same way he’d done with her, except she ran her hands forward as well, tracing his length through his fabric, and he made a funny choking sound.

He pushed her back on the bed and drank in the sight. He was right, her pale skin contrasted beautifully with his deep blue sheets. The flush of her cheeks and chest and the pink of her nipples begged for touch, and he fell on top of her and between her legs, mouths crashing and teeth practically clashing as she squeezed him between her thighs and their tongues dragged together. He let out something ragged and pleading as his cock brushed her heat through the flimsy fabrics they wore between them, and he pushed himself back to prolong the moment.

“Me too,” he said, the tremble in his voice now, and she smiled. “A long time. Before you were born, probably.”

She laughed and hit his arm playfully. It had been a long time since he’d done this; since he’d done _all_ of _this_. But his imagination had been weaving fantasies and scenarios for months, and he followed the map in his mind, placing memories of how a woman liked to be touched alongside his desire of where he wanted to lick her and how he wanted to fuck her.

“Love you too,” he murmured, against her skin, then into her ear. “I love you too. God, I’ve loved you for so long. Before you were born, probably.”

With another playful smack he was on top of her again, kissing and sucking and whispering her name while she whispered his back. “Let me, Belle,” he said before her nod allowed him to palm and kiss her breasts again.

Belle made it easy, this sex thing, as she seemed to know just how to work his map too. She trailed her hands and mouth over his body and tuned him until he was quivering with barely held self restraint. He knew just what to do to hold himself off a little longer, and give her time to prepare for the full of him.

Nuzzling his nose into the wet of her panties, he pleaded. “Let me Belle, let me,”

“ _Stop asking and just do it you can just do it you have express permission from now on_ oh oh yes yes!”

He chuckled, the rumbling of which shot more pleasure though her as his mouth was now full of Belle. There had been something terribly erotic about shoving her panties down and taking her in his mouth in one go. Her taste was amazing, a warm sugar and salt he couldn’t quite describe with words so he described it through touch, showing his appreciation for her with the roughness of his tongue, flat with long licks then short and teasing with little flicks. He took her individual parts into his mouth and sucked gently, one lip then the other, then her clitoris, coaxing her hips to buck against him and her fingers to tangle in his hair. He let his sucking become rough when he started to feel tremors in her thighs against his ears, and teased her entrance with the pads of his fingertips.

When she moaned at his first investigative thrust, he delved deeper, creating a new rhythm between hand and tongue, and she released his hair, much to his dismay as he’d love the feel of her tugging on it. It had been painful in a most wonderful way. He looked up to see her kneading her own breasts and tweaking her own nipples, head rolling slowly from side to side. He pressed his cock into the mattress, the friction relieving some of the strain the sight had suddenly put upon him.

She blinked her eyes open several times, then blushed when she saw him looking at her, his mouth open and his lips swollen and pink, glistening with her all over him.

“You’re . . . you’re using your fingers to do that?” she asked.

“You couldn’t tell just which was my tongue or not?”

His fingers were still thrusting into her slowly, and she moaned before answering with a tight, breathy voice. “It’s just this wild, big, burning sensation. I’m feeling . . . too much. It’s amazing. Please keep going. And please do your mouth again. Please don’t stop.”

“I’m not stopping till you come in my mouth, sweetheart.”

The dirty promise had her blushing furiously, more so than when she’d been caught touching herself, and when he went back to sucking her clitoris she let out a strangled cry. And he was right, he didn’t stop until she was coming in his mouth. It was beautiful hearing her climax, and feeling her tremble uncontrollably underneath him. It had him pressing his cock into the bed again, until he decided it was simply time to press it into her.

He crawled atop her when her orgasm had subsided, attempting to draw her hands into his, until he was drawing away as she’d started to swat at him.

“Time for sleep, like you said,” she chided, curling up on her side and hugging a pillow underneath her head.

“ _Tease_ ,” he laughed, rolling her back over, and in swift move he pulled her down underneath him, wrapping her legs around him. In return she pulled his mouth to hers, tangling her fingers in his hair roughly before reaching down and pushing at his boxers. He didn’t need any more encouragement. He snaked the undergarments off his legs and smiled as her greedy look of lust eyed his erection. He grabbed her hands and placed them above her head on the bed, intertwining their fingers and kissing her long and deep.

“Look at me,” he said, pushing into her, small thrusts, an inch at a time. She didn’t at first, didn’t look at him, and he ran his mouth over her nose and eyes until she did. Her mouth was open in a beautiful little o, and she was starting to buck her hips against his, and soon he’d filled her to the hilt, and her o had become loud cries, gulping for air as he rocked his hips against her harder and harder. He moved his hands down until he’d tucked them underneath her, and her into him, in a tight grip with his arms encircling her and his hands pulling down at her shoulders, allowing him to thrust deeper and harder. Before he could stop himself, he was falling over the edge with a loud cry of his own.

He was pulsing into her, and he snaked a hand down to rub furiously at her clit to urge her along again, Belle busy crying, “God, I can feel it, I can feel you coming in me, oh Adrian,” until her mouth was open in a silent scream as she convulsed around him.

He cradled her, muttering words she couldn’t understand into her hair while she ran out of breath and her eyes fluttered closed.

“Amazing,” she muttered, somewhere between the part in his hair.

“Aye,” he mumbled, the small word obscured as his face had fallen down to her throat, tucking away and making himself comfortable. They groaned together when he pulled out, and a funny sense of pride washed over him when he felt how sticky she was between her thighs.

“Now,” he said, “now we sleep.”

“This is just how it was last night,” she whispered. “Naked me as your makeshift pillow.”

“I can’t think of a better way to battle insomnia,” he said, sighing as she ran her fingers through his hair.

He tucked them both under the covers before resuming his position on her chest and she resumed petting his hair, and they drifted off again in a much more blissful sleep than before.

After they’d been asleep for several hours, or a few (he wasn’t exactly sure as it was still light out when he woke, and he couldn’t see his clock from where he lay) he huddled her as close to him as he could, whispering desperately in her ear, words quiet and muddled, and she stirred awake slowly. When she turned to face him, he kissed her languidly, guiding his hand slowly down between her thighs, until his hands and his words found a steady rhythm.

“ _My magic is unwritten. U_ _nrelenting as the curse of love. Permanent as my errors . . ._ ”

The words were rolling around in her head, finding no place to settle because they were unfamiliar and strange. She was trying to concentrate but his manipulations were driving her wild, so she reached down and started stroking him so she could return the favor, the dizziness he was creating in her, and he thrust up into her hand, reciting with more vigor.

“ _Beware my smile. I am treacherous with old magic._ ”

“You’re not making sense. What are you saying?”

“I’m quoting poetry to you. You’re a bloody librarian.”

“I don’t know that one,” she said.

“I’ll make sure you know it by morning.”

His hands felt like more than hands. They felt like a part of her, reaching into her, deep until every crevice was filled, from the roots of her hair to the tips of her own fingers wrapped furiously around his cock. The more he touched her the more she lost herself, and the more she touched him the stranger his words grew. They were gasping with each other, and she realized she must be filling him, too.

They slept again, or at least he did, and she happily nuzzled against him, content in his warmth. She fluttered her eyes closed, and when she opened them again she wasn’t exactly sure just how much time had passed. The glow in the room seemed less than it had been before, and surely the sun was setting by now and they’d destroy their chances at a normal sleep schedule. But he was stirring again beside her, pressing his lips to her ear again, speaking again,

“Stay with me, stay with me, Belle. I’m a greedy, possessive man, and I want you, all of you. Stay with me, stay with me.”

He thought she couldn’t hear him, or if she did, she wouldn’t remember. But she did, and she would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for any mistakes in this chapter. I've sat on it for so long and rewrote and rewrote and I finally found that burst of creative energy I needed to get it out . . . but it's also 2am and I'm not quite sure that that last third came from a place of sanity. Ah, well. Insomnia IS the AU I'm writing in, so it's only fitting I write it while battling my bouts of insomnia.
> 
> Poetry, out of order and out of context by a sleepy sexed Gold, is by Audre Lorde
> 
> Got any questions or prompts? Hit me up at [nerdrumple](http://nerdrumple.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


	5. Together We’re Possessed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been over a year since the last update. I'm so sorry. The story's been finished, but a year ago I lost someone very important to me and this story simply reminded me of that terrible time. But it's time to publish the end to this, eh? Hope you enjoy.

I’ve fallen asleep in the fire, she thought. The embers had been all around, bursting into wild flames until they’d  died back down again, and she’d survived, she’d survived the flames.

The glow of the afternoon was gone like it’d never existed, but she could feel its remnants sore between her thighs and pleasantly scolded against her skin. It had certainly ruffled her hair into a tangled mess, she thought with dismay. But she was surrounded in blackness again, no orange or yellow of a sunset to greet her because they’d slept through it. She found that she was happy for the fact. She wasn’t yet ready for normalcy, wasn’t ready for showers and dresses and breakfasts and goodbyes as they returned to their schedules and their daylight.

She liked the feeling of Gold wrapped around her, the sweat of his arm around her waist, the feel of his softness if she pressed her rear into him. She slid her smooth legs against the friction of the hair that covered his, and smiled at the itchiness. His breathing was deep and heavy with sleep, a pleasant vulnerability to the man with careful breaths and calculated words. She felt herself growing wet at the thought of him and his mouth, and was tempted to guide his hand down to her again, but another temptation felt stronger.

For the first time, she didn’t have to wander out into the cold to experience her midnight. She could enjoy it right here, in the warmth of Gold’s home.

She slipped from his grasp, worried the absence of her weight and warmth would rouse him, but he slept on. She felt around on the floor until she found his shirt, a smug smile crawling over her as she buttoned it on slowly.

The coolness of his hardwood floors greeted her, and she wandered out and down the stairs, the strange familiarity of her own home grazing her as she took the steps. She tried to remember the layout of his place from hours before when she’d entered it; kitchen here, living area there. There were doors, her memory recalled, glass French doors tucked out of view behind the stairs. She rounded the corner to find them.

His office.

It was neat and organized, like the rest of him, and she was aware that she was viewing a meticulous system even if it wasn’t one that she could quickly decipher. There were no open letters sitting haphazardly inside the envelopes they’d been torn from the way it was in her home. Simple stacks of papers lay in piles with purpose, their folds creased flat. She eyed the stacks, and allowed herself to sit inGold’s chair. She was careful not to reach forward and touch anything; she was already aware that she shouldn’t be here. The kitchen and bathroom were fine, but this was a room for no guest to explore, even if it was her.

But then she saw it, the cup. Chipped and tucked away to the edge of the desk, set so close beside a cubby of files as to be obscured by what little light wandered into the room from the moon. She’d almost missed it entirely. She grasped it now, unable to help herself, and brought it to her chest, thumbing the chip before setting it back down on the desk. He’d brought it home with him; he’d kept it close. The intimacy of her discovery gave her the courage to explore further; however wrong, however ill-conceived.

The letters weren’t hidden. They faced upright, and only required slight maneuvering around the stack to view each one that lay underneath the other. She saw names, she saw dates, she saw a story laid out in cold facts and impersonal language. There were jots with Gold’s scroll along other letters, notes of hopeful questions before defeat had inevitably been declared.

His name was Baelfire.

A name she’d never heard or read before, and wasn’t entirely sure how to pronounce.

There were other names, and other jots of hope. Here it is, she thought. The normalcy, the daylight I’ve been avoiding. This was Gold’s normalcy, this was his daytime hours concern, the one that had bled into his nights. It brought her out of her head and into the reality of what was to come. She back at the library, him back in the pawn shop. Could they make this work, this thing that had bloomed between them over several midnights, could they bring it out into the day? Could this thing that had brought him so much pain ever be quelled by her efforts?

The letters, the cup. Daylight and midnight, side by side. Before she could continue riffling, before she could clean up and leave, she heard the whisper of a hand on the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” she said, standing right away. “I didn’t mean to snoop.”

He was naked, and didn’t have his cane with him. That’s right, she thought, we’d left it downstairs when we’d headed up. I was the one he leaned on when he needed me. And now look what I’ve done.

He was beautiful in the moonlight of his home, thin and taut and a little terrifying as he somehow managed to loom over her from his position at the doorway. She heard a sigh shudder through the room, something trembling and scared, and realized it was her.

Whenever confronted with a new emotion, or one she didn't have a terrible amount of experience with, Belle tried to relish in it. Good or bad, it needed to be remembered. And here was one: vulnerability. Attached to it was not naivety or the fear of being taken advantage of, this was different. Instead there was shame at being caught doing something bad, the thrill of being found, and the immediate and insatiable desire to be forgiven. This is what he must have felt, she realized, when she caught him speaking cruelly to her father.

He eyed her carefully. She was too embarrassed to speak. Why hadn’t she just stayed with him like he’d asked?

“Take off my shirt,” he instructed.

Her hands moved clumsily, but the buttons eased themselves away and she slid the shirt from her shoulders, baring them along with her breasts and stomach and sex and legs. She let the shirt fall behind her into the chair she’d been sitting in. This was a different kind of undressing, she knew. It wasn’t a striptease he was trying to extract from her, nevertheless she felt the weight of his eyes once she was naked to him. He finally entered the room, only a few steps, just enough so she could see him better.

“Now, how does that make you feel?" he asked.

"I-"

"Don't answer,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Just remember. Because that's how finding you like this makes me feel."

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

He rounded the desk to meet her, about to place his hands on her shoulders, but then he saw the cup. He picked it up and ran his thumb over the chip the same way she had. She reached up to cradle his hands where they held the memento of her.

“If you want to know something, just ask me, Belle.”

“I wasn’t looking for anything. I was just excited to see your home, and then I came in here, and then I saw . . . I shouldn’t have looked, I’m sorry—“

“Belle, would you quiet down? It’s all right, I want you to know,” he said, surprising her. “Go on, ask me.”

She licked her lips tentatively. “Your son, Baelfire,” the name came out strange on her lips, “he drowned?”

Gold set the cup down on top of the papers, running a finger over the rim while nodding. “How much did you read?”

“Not much,” she said truthfully.

“Bae died saving his son after he fell overboard on a boat excursion.”

So that’s why he’d made a funny noise when Belle had mentioned her father’s plans to join his brother’s boat. “Your . . . grandson. He saved your grandson.”

“Henry,” Gold smiled softly.

“You didn’t tell me you had a grandson.”

“And a daughter-in-law. I didn’t know myself.”

“Are you . . . will you be able to see them?”

“Yes,” he said, a true smile returning. He reached down and searched for a particular document, pulling it out and handing it over for Belle.

She read it silently. “His wife’s American . . . they’ll be coming here?”

“Yes. For the holidays.”

“This is wonderful!”

“Yes,” that smile again, watery. “They’ve obliged to visit this old troll, despite everything. They’re not terribly well off. I don’t even care if that’s all they’re coming for--at least it’s something I can offer them. A comfortable life. They lost Bae too, after all.”

“Tell me about him,” Belle said, and Gold sat in the chair, snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her down into his lap. He spoke a little about his son to her, and the way the words came out stumbling and hesitant told her it’d been a long time since he spoke to anyone about his son. He hadn’t had to convert words out of the strong, jagged emotions regarding his son in a long time, and pulling them out was difficult.

“He died a hero,” she tried to supply, the words sounding stupid and hollow. It likely didn’t matter how Bae died, Gold had lost him and that hole would always be there. The unhealing wound, the knife that stabs itself.

“What did you say?”

She looked down at him. Perhaps she’d said that last part out loud.

“Yes,” he said, “Stabbed every time I think of him. I’ll never be forgiven for what I did.”

“What did you do, exactly?”

He was silent for a while. “I chose . . . power, control, over him. I made choices without caring how it would affect him. I always came first,” he sighed. “I’m a difficult man to love.”

“When you finally found out what happened . . . did Milah tell you?”

“Milah?” he scoffed. “No, no. I never told you proper. She’s been out of the picture longer than I have. She left first, see. Ran off with someone who suited her fancy better. It was me and Bae for a while, and I should have relished that, but I got greedy, I got selfish. Cost me my boy. But . . . Milah knew before I did. That Bae had gone. Somewhere along the way, Bae had befriended her new beau. It was through my contact concerned with that blaggard that I found out.”

“But she knew? And she never contacted you to tell you?”

“No. And she got to attend his funeral, did I mention that? Couldn’t even bother to ring me up for that.”

His grip on her was tight now, unconscious, nails in her hips.

“Parents aren’t supposed to bury their children. It’s supposed to be the other way around. But if their children do die, they should at least be given   _the chance to bury them_ .”

She felt his skin heating up with the anger as it rose in him, lining sweat along his forehead and making his words spit out coarse and tight. He ducked his head under her chin and she held him as tightly as she could, stroking his hair while his body trembled, and she finally heard what Adrian Gold sounded like when he cried.

She kissed his hair, stroked his skin, and whispered words of love to him until the trembling calmed and he’d buried his face in her breasts to quiet his sobs. When he gently took a nipple in his mouth, the feeling was almost like a babe suckling his mother as she gave him comfort. The feeling that image washed through her made her eyes widen and her grip tighten on him even more. A new knowledge blossomed within herself, something that recognized just what was happening between them and just how deeply the roots of their relationship had dug, beyond quips and midnights and thrusts - she was truly, truly in love with Adrian.

When he lifted his head to look at her, and she ran her hands over his face to clear the wetness away, he kissed her in a manner that was chaste but profound. A  _thank you_ , an  _I love you_ , a  _thank God you’re here, finally, finally here_.

The morning was around the corner, they both knew. Normalcy and routine loomed ahead. Rather than coaxing her to sleep again he suggested they shower, if only to prolong the time he could roam his hands over her.

They walked back up the stairs together, him leaning on her with an arm draped over her shoulder and intertwining their fingers again. They made their way to his master bath, and she had the same face she wore every time she walked into a new room of his: quiet awe and excited reverence.

He smiled softly as he watched her touch the fixtures and exposed plumbing, many replicas of the original Victorian designs since their predecessors were no longer functionally trustworthy. A large window along one wall allowed a dipping moon to greet them, hinting that the rays of daylight would soon emerge. A clawfoot tub showed itself off in the middle, but it was the large, clearly modern glass enclosure taking up an entire corner of the room that Belle headed for, turning around in invitation for him to follow.

The way he looked at her made her feel very beautiful. It brought a throbbing warmth between her legs. She could see that he’d gotten half hard, building slowly as he approached her. When he was fully erect she saw his hands flex, perhaps the desire to grasp himself, but instead he drew close to her. He touched her gently, barely, a hand ghosting over her stomach and then the underside of her breast. She felt his cock graze her hip, and she thought of the point of a spindle, pricking her under its spell, and reached out to touch him herself, him letting out a breath in the sharp form of a hiss. It was in this position that she led him behind the glass doors with her, making him laugh as she towed him along by the part most interested in burying itself in her.

Belle fiddled with the knobs, Gold offering no help beyond a teasing laugh when she reached for the wrong one. She yelped when the spray emerged sharp and cold, and he laughed harder while holding his hands up to block the frigid water.

Once she’d adjusted the temperature to a pleasant searing warmth, he pulled her back tight to his chest. “You’re beautiful, my Belle,” he said, reaching up to knead her breasts and pluck at her nipples. “I’m so glad you’re here, my beautiful, beautiful, Belle.” Her skin was still pebbled from the jarring cold, and he chuckled into her hair as he kneaded her harder. She sighed and pressed her rear into his erection while he bucked gently against her. He pulled on her hair with a soft tug, her head leaning back onto his shoulder and exposing her throat to him.

“I love you, my Belle. How is it that I ever managed to make you love me?” he said, sucking gently at the spot behind her ear before moving down to bite her neck. It was meant to sound teasing and sly, but she could hear the shudder underneath. He’d only been crying moments before, and the pain of the memories that brought him to those tears still lingered about him despite the comfort he was taking in her. I have to let him know, she thought.

“I don’t think you’re a difficult man to love,” Belle said, turning around in his arms. She pressed her breasts to his chest, pulling his mouth to hers before running warm, wet hands over his slippery back. They kissed languidly, allowing no urgency to rush away the moment. He’d been so vulnerable with her before, and under the hot spray of the water she hoped she could make him understand what that meant to her.

He pulled back but kept his mouth ghosting over hers. “You can’t mean that. After all I put you through with your father.”

“You have it wrong, Adrian,” Belle said,  fingers tugging on his wet strands. “The difficulty was trying to  _keep_  myself from loving you, you’d made me so damned mad.”

“You can’t mean that,” he repeated, “you’re letting the darkness of the beast taint your thinking.”

“You think you're the only one with a dark side,” she hummed, pressing her chest tighter against him and letting her body glide purposefully against his hardness.

“You’ve no darkness, Belle,” he said hoarsely but seriously. “All of you is light.”

“I’ve as much as anyone. Everyone has a dark side, at least a little.”

“Every side of me is dark. The light touches nothing.” 

“I'm touching you.”

This wasn’t midnight any longer, and she wanted him to know that. She cupped his face the way he always did with her, thumbs pressing into his jawline, and she perched herself on her toes, the spray of the shower thrumming against her cheek as she pressed up to his ear. “I'm a greedy, possessive woman, Adrian. And I want you, all of you. Stay with me, stay with me.”

He gasped at her words, pulling away to look her straight in the face. His eyebrows pulled together in disbelief, then he pulled her mouth to his with a force that bordered violence, his tongue moving against hers in words he couldn’t quite get himself to say.

“Belle,  _Belle_ ,” he said, his words sounding like sobs again. They kissed for what felt like ages, bumping noses and pressing foreheads. She didn’t hear the raggedness of his breath so much as she felt it, and she wound her hands through his hair, holding his head firmly to hers and she could look him straight in the eye. She watched him closely for moments, hoping to convey the intensity of her feelings for him through her gaze.

“Ah, where were you when I was young?” he grated after a moment, running his hands over her hot and slippery flesh before tangling in her wet hair as well.

“Being born, most likely.” 

He laughed heartily, the sound muffled as he buried his face in her neck again, leaving possessive marks in his wake. The empty ache between her legs was growing angry, and each bite he left seemed directly tethered to the sensation, so she guided his hand down to her, and he smiled at the slickness he felt there, markedly different from the wet heat falling around them.

A bench was situated along the back edge of the shower, and Gold pulled back to sit, tugging Belle forward to keep her close and in front of him. The bench had clearly been installed to bypass the discomfort of standing on an injured leg when all he needed was a simple shampoo, but Belle smiled at the thoughts of other potentials it offered.

Gold wrapped his arms snug around her and pulled her close enough until his face was buried in her stomach. “Belle,  _Belle_ ,” he repeated again, his nose nuzzling her belly button while she carded her hands through his hair, letting the water run over his face and down his back.

“Please tell me this isn’t the last time we’ll ever do this,” Gold said. “That you’ll allow me to touch and taste you again. For several more  _agains_.”

“Adrian, yes!” Belle cried out, cupping his face. She thumbed at his lips and he sucked them in before reaching around to squeeze her rear. She sighed as he reached lower and under, running tentative fingers along the curve of her buttock at the underside. He probed gently, enjoying the feel of her lips before sliding further. His other hand reached up to cup her, thumb deftly finding her clit and rubbing with light, indirect pressure.

“Several more  _agains_ ,” Belle repeated, “midnights and mornings and the middle of the day.” She soon had to brace her hands on the shower wall, enjoying the sight of Gold beyond her curtained hair streaming with water. The feeling of the water trailing down her mouth felt like a second kiss, and the thought carried her into a beautiful haze of pleasure from the combination of the heat on her mouth and the heat of his touch.

This third degree will never leave me, she thought as his fingers finally slipped inside her.

He pumped in and out of her slowly, light touch that reflected the pressure he glided over her clitoris. He was mouthing at her stomach, gentle kisses that shifted into open mouthed licks and bites at her hip bones, rebranding the marks he’d left on her hours before. “You’re my light, you’re my light,” he kept murmuring, shifting lower and lower, coaxing her legs wider and wider. She obliged with limbs trembling slightly, hot anticipation running through her.

His mouth finally on her, he sucked in her clitoris without hesitation, and she moaned loudly, eyes squinting shut while her legs trembled and she struggled to keep herself upright.

“I can’t, I need to, I  _can’t_ ,” she gasped, and he chuckled with understanding, the vibrations making her keen. He pulled back and coaxed her to sit astride him, Belle sighing with relief from the terrible tension he’d wound in her. Foreheads pressing again, she was able to guide him to her, and with his hands moving up to squeeze her hips then grasp her shoulders, she impaled herself with a long moan.

“So good!” she cried, and he nuzzled his face into her neck, head moving in a funny nodding motion with her lifts and dips atop his cock. He dragged his teeth along flesh where he could, eyes squinting almost in pain from the pleasure her tightness was giving him. The sultry heat of the shower made it feel like the entirety of him was wrapped up inside her, all of him fucking her, and nothing could make him happier.

Everything was so terribly slippery and as Gold reached down to rub circles into her clit, Belle brought his other hand up so she could suck tenderly on his thumb. Both movements started to become rough as both neared their peaks, and when Belle came over his cock she nearly bit his thumb and had to pull away with a choked groan.

“ _Adrian Adrian Adrian Adrian_ ,” she murmured over and over as she shuddered around him. When he came inside her, loving the feel of his white self gushing in her against her clenching walls, he grasped for her face again, pulling his mouth to her ear so she could also hear just what pleasure she’d brought him.

Her body grew limp against his and he slumped back against the shower wall, cradling her into him. They stayed like that, letting their pulses calm down while the heat of the water ended its course over them.

“The water’s getting cold,” Belle murmured against his neck. Gold managed to reach the knobs after shifting slightly and with a little help from Belle, and soon the water was cut away and he was clutching her tightly to him again, relishing in the feeling of her body on his before the steam managed to escape and leave them shivering. She smiled into his wet hair before slipping away, him groaning in protest before she managed to coax him out of the shower and into a fluffy towel.

The normalcy had finally come upon them, but the glow of the promises they’d made to each other in the heat of lovemaking still buzzed around them, making getting ready a happy affair shared together. As they’d poorly prepared for her sleepover, Belle was forced to wear yesterday’s dress and had only her fingers to comb her unruly waves. He helped, mostly for the excuse to remain close, and she laughed as his fingers only tangled her up worse.

God, he wasn’t ready for her to go.

Once dressed and entirely too normal looking, they enjoyed a light breakfast of coffee, eggs, and toast. She daydreamed about making him something more elaborate later, sighing as Gold led her to the entryway where they’d started this whole thing.

He helped her slip on her coat, and turned her around in his arms to wrap her up in a last embrace. She ran her fingers gently over his tie before kneeling down to retrieve her purse, hauling it onto her shoulder and toying with something inside for a moment. He sought his mind for something to say, then grabbed onto a thought he’d been entertaining earlier. “Your bag,” he motioned. “Is the envelope still on you?”

“Yes,” she said, confused but obliging as she reached in to fetch it and offer it to him. Gold took the envelope and looked inside. “What is it?” Belle asked.

“Maybe your father left a note,” he said, then handed the envelope back to her unsatisfied. “Appears he did not. Shame. I was hoping I could read it to you and we’d share a moment together.”

She chuckled. “We share plenty of moments together. You’re the only one I ever share moments with.”

Oh, how the greediness in him wanted her to be right. He was growing so wild for her. All these nights they’d spent together, sharing words and humor and allowing themselves to intertwine and become similar. He eyed her, realizing what a fool he’d been. Both town recluses in their own right: one a downright nasty beast, the other a funny little beauty who used books as shields to keep out unwanted trespassers. They’d been more alike from the beginning than he’d originally thought.

“Not even your father?” he said, interrupting his own thoughts.

She scoffed, shook her head. “He’s not a man of words, much less moments,” Belle said. “That morning was the most we’ve talked in years.”

“Surely destroying my sign held something special for you.”

“Oh!” she gulped down a laugh. “Yes. That was it. That was our moment. Not to be shared with anyone, though you were underlying it, of course.”

That held him in place and kept him from reaching forward to put his arms around her. He wasn’t sure how she’d managed to rise over the obstacle that was  _everything about him_  and how he’d hurt her and her family, but she had, and he wouldn’t allow himself to be an underlying issue of negativity for her anymore.

“He asked me if I’d ever had a dream,” she said.

“A dream?” Gold asked, trying to keep up with her train of thought.

“Yeah. He said his dream was to go to Alaska, go on one of their fishing boats. But, you see, I didn’t know that. He’d never said anything about it before. For all I know it was dream he came up with a month ago. Five minutes ago. He’d never told me his dreams before, and he’d never asked for mine. But he did that day.”

“And what did you tell him?”

She paused. “I didn’t tell him anything. He was just . . . introducing the subject for himself, so I didn’t answer.”

“Answer it for me, then.”

She looked at him, realizing she was holding herself, realizing she probably looked small and frail. “Dreams shift, don’t they? They change, but they’re the same, just some . . . advanced form of what they used to be.”

“So what did you want? And what do you want now?”

“I wanted . . . heroism. Bravery. And  . . . travel,” she laughed. “I thought travel was the only way I’d find it, the only way I’d find adventure, but . . .”

“But?”

“But I’ve found a different kind of bravery. Or I’ve found what bravery really looks like. What I used to want was to leave. Leave so I could find something. But now my dream is to stay, stay because . . . because I think I’ve found it.”

As she replaced the envelope in her bag, she pulled out the object she’d been toying with earlier.

“You managed to check a book out before we left?” he asked, watching her.

“Actually, no, I just . . . brought it with me.”

“You nasty little thief. Wait ‘til the librarian hears of this!”

She smiled slyly, and ran her hands over the book’s cover slowly, and indeed it was the same book he’d caught her caressing yesterday.

“Are you going to read to me?” he asked in a low voice.

She said nothing to his question but nodded, opening the book and licking her lips as she prepared herself for the words.

_“ How was it possible to be afraid and in love? The two things did not go together. How was it possible to be afraid, when the two of them grew stronger together every day? And every night.”_

She looked up at him, her eyes fluttering, and it turned his stomach into an excited knot, but he held his composure, and held her gaze in her brief pause before she returned to the passage.

_“ Every night was different, and every morning. Together they possessed a miracle.”_

“A miracle?” he asked.

“Aren’t we?” she chuckled.

“Beauty and the Beast.”

“That’s a fairytale, not a miracle.”

“Both are correct, and both describe us perfectly,” he said before gathering her up in a kiss.

As the weeks followed, the sudden physical closeness shared between the two wasn’t lost on the town. In light of her father’s leaving, some offered Belle a sneer as though she’d betrayed the man in favor of a monster, while others offered sympathetic looks like they believed she’d been offered to Gold in one of his infamous deals. Only the town eccentric seemed entranced by their union, and he was unabashed in his participation on the matter.

“You two  _ canoodled _  all weekend, didn’t you?” Jefferson said, catching them on the street. He wore a half grin on his face so lopsided it verged on colliding with his shoulder.

Belle blushed with a small smile, feeling the comment called for no response. And Gold clearly agreed, as he did nothing more than tilt his head towards Jefferson in goodbye and place a hand at her waist to lead them both away.

“When the king is happy, everyone’s happy!” Jefferson called after them.

Gold snorted while Belle mused over the words. “King? Because, what, you practically own the town? What you say goes? We’re all peasants in your presence?”

Gold bit his lip, holding back a chuckle. “I prefer to think of myself as . . . a wizard. Local warlock.”

It was Belle’s turn to bite her lip to hold back a laugh. “A diabolical one at that. Dark little imp.”

“If you please,” he said smugly.

“You like being the dark one around here, don’t you?”

He said nothing but smiled despite himself.

“You do,” Belle said with a roll of her eyes and a smile.

“I prefer the dark, if that’s what you’re driving at. The night . . . midnight, in particular,” he said, suddenly affectionate and nuzzling her hair with his nose. He did this when they were out of sight and his reputation wasn’t hanging in the balance, though his public self control had started to waver. “It’s something we have in common, I believe.”

“It’s definitely where we found each other,” she said.

It had bothered her when he assumed no darkness lay inside her as well. She wasn't evil, she didn't hurt people, and she certainly didn't crave the downfall of anyone she knew. But Belle liked the taste of blood in her mouth, was often thinking of sex when perhaps she should be thinking of card cataloging, and had jumped at the chance to disappear with him for a day when he’d offered it. Surely he saw that?

They made their way to the pawn shop, and as she was about to bid him goodbye, he yanked her by the arm in after him.

For a man who maintained a hard veneer to the outside world that exhibited a stony dedication to order, discipline, and adherence, he sure became playful when left alone with her. She knew that under all that schooled discipline was a simple man like any other, kindness that no one in town would believe.  A soft spot had been dug inside him, and she was the one who occupied it.

“We have a moment or two,” he breathed hotly in her ear, echoing their night first spent together in his shop. He curled an arm tight around her as he smiled and locked the door. When she looked at him there was an openness to his face letting her know she could say no if she wanted to.

She never wanted to.

Because Belle loved these moments. The exhilaration they provided with their dirty promises, when she was fully dressed in the middle of a busy schedule and  _goodness isn’t productivity at an all-time high!_  And then a sly whisper into her ear by his tempting mouth would suggest that perhaps they should spend this day in bed, all day, wrapped up in sleep and sex and wouldn't that be lovely?

Belle had always wanted such moments. And in the weeks that followed, Gold would often press his mouth to her, her library all around her, or his pawn shop with its orderly antiques, her dresses and his suits straight and proper against their skin, the correctness of etiquette and politeness faded away for the grit his promises offered. That she could wrap her legs around him and bury her face in his neck, bite as hard as she wanted, and return to this world of proper etiquette later, because he was here to whisk her where she truly wanted to be. Perhaps he saw her darkness after all.

The holidays came and went, and the visit with Bae’s wife and son had gone smoothly. As smoothly as it could have gone, anyway. Emma, the lithe blonde that Bae had made his wife, was hard-voiced and wary of Gold, but when they came toe to toe on a topic she could spar with him in a way that made him proud she was his daughter-in-law. He never said as much, but Belle could feel it.

His grandson he was more careful around, probably because a piece of Bae lived on in him. Henry was a lively and imaginative boy, quick to share details about his father once he felt comfortable with Gold (a feat made possible only by Belle’s gentle smiles and prodding from the side).

Offering them ‘what he could,’ though, had become a touchy subject.

“We don’t need your money,” Emma said with finality. “I just wanted Henry to meet his grandfather.”

“I understand,” Gold said in his broker voice, and Belle tried for another smiling prod to get his demeanor to loosen. “But the money is simply Bae’s inheritance. It makes sense that it should go to his wife and son in their time of need.”

“Our ‘time of need’ is being met quite fine, thank you. I’m taking a job up in New York.”

“You’re moving to America permanently?” Gold’s voice sparked with hope.

“Yes!” Henry said. “We can always visit you now!”

Belle watched as a flinch ran across Gold’s face, so subtle as to go unnoticed by a less tender eye. But she knew sorrow when she saw it, and the reignition of hope that lay there. If Gold couldn’t reconcile with his son, he could do so with Henry.

“I would like that very much,” he whispered steadily.

In the end, dates were chosen for their next visits, both them to Storybrooke and him to New York. “Belle will be there too, right?” Henry asked in a clumsy childhood manner as he and Emma headed for the door.

Belle caught herself about to answer positively with a smile, but looked to Gold before she made premature assumptions about where their relationship was headed. They’d made dirty promises to each other in the dark that had matured out of possessiveness and into something sweeter, but they’d yet to talk about the finality of their relationship in the daytime.

“Of course,” Gold said with the widest smile he’d managed to muster that evening. “Belle will always be there.”

A warmth settled over Belle that hummed through her skin as Gold took her hand and they bid goodbye to Bae’s family. She suddenly understood the romantic side of  _family_ , when a lover becomes more than a tumble in bed or a preoccupation for lonely nights. Like digging to sow seed only to find the roots already established. She looked up at Gold after Emma and Henry were out of sight, and saw fear in his expression, worry that he was the one to act prematurely when he insisted on her consistent attendance to New York.

“I’ll always be there,” she confirmed with a kiss before he could barrage her with his self-doubt and worry.

Over the weeks, Gold managed to get Emma to relent to him setting up a college fund for Henry. The new agreement put a beat in his step that even a man with a cane couldn’t hide. Belle found herself spending more and more nights at his place, and occasionally they’d stay at hers, though her accommodations were far less lavish and didn’t quite feel like home.

He must have agreed with her, because after one particularly routine day at the library and pawn shop they’d settled down for dinner at her place. While doing dishes together, she noticed Gold taking a long look around her kitchen and living room.

“How long have you lived here?” he asked.

“Don’t you know? I pay rent to you.”

He smiled down at her, something warm and thoughtful. “Since you got your job at the library,” he remembered.

“Yes,” she smiled at him. Their dinner mess taken care of, she coaxed him to join her in the living room.

“Would you consider leaving it all behind? You’d save significantly in rent money,” he said matter-of-factly, but Belle felt her cheeks redden at the direction the conversation was heading. The way his eyes looked both bright and anxious only made her red deepen.

He trailed a hand carefully down her neck. “I don’t mean to suggest that yours is a bad place. Just that it’s not . . . my place.”

“But it is your place. Again, I pay rent to  _you_.”

He chuckled heartily and engulfed her in a hug, his chest to her back and his hands over her stomach. “It’s just, the idea of owning two beds in separate locations seems excessive, don’t you think? Perhaps we should consolidate to . . . one bed. For convenience.”

“Don’t you own  _all_  the beds in  _all_  the locations of Storybrooke? Then yes, I consider that excessive.”

He chuckled again, softer this time. “You’re not working with me on this one.”

“What one?” she asked, her sly smile made ridiculous by her poor attempts to hide laughter, “you’re the one terribly concerned with the amount of sleeping space existing in Storybrooke. If you’re suggesting that your tenants need to pair up, just say so.”

“Stop being cheeky. You’re fully aware of who I’m suggesting I pair up with,” he whispered. He fiddled with her hair, the chestnut curls weaving around his finger again and again, and it was easy to get lost in her thoughts as he did so.

“How about we stay up tonight? All night?” he whispered again.

“You’ve got to be joking,” she smiled.

“You don’t hear me laughing, do you?”

His arms already wrapped around her middle, he pulled her into his lap as he landed on the sofa and tugged her close.

“We’re alone, now,” he said. “No more bustle of the day.”

“I thought you said we're never alone,” she chided.

“We are tonight, love. We’re alone every night. Just you and me and no one else. And I want to keep being alone with you, as long as you’ll have me.”

His hand had moved underneath her skirt, and she was losing herself to the sensation. She couldn’t speak and she couldn’t think, because the way he was looking at her and the way he was touching her made her incapable of thinking of anything at all.

“If you don’t stop that, I’m going to . . .”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“God, no.”

“So, tonight, eh? Stay up with me? How about you fall in love with me all over again? This time I’ll be less of a bastard.”

She laughed, the sound made weak by all that he was doing to her. She eased her legs wider as his hands were coaxing her to do. He worked her into frenzy, just as he always did, watching her face intently as she fell apart at his manipulations. With his other hand he cupped the back of her head, and turned her until his mouth was pressed to her ear while she breathed heavily through the exhaustion he’d put her through. “Stay with me, Belle. Move in with me. Marry me. Be greedy with me, possess me. Say you will, please.”

She smiled languidly, and turned herself around in his arms until their foreheads were pressed together and she could ghost her lips over his nose. 

"Of course I will. I’d stay up all night for that." 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking through with me to the end of this. Side note, every book mentioned in this story is beautiful lesbian literature. That I’ve managed to stuff into a het fic. Anyway. You should all them check out! Book mentioned this time: The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith.


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